College life Students impress on


Britain’s Got Talent Describing the group’s performance as ‘funny, original: I think the royal family needs to see this,’ judge Louis Walsh sent Out Of The Blue (OOTB) through to the second stage of ITV’s Britain’s Got Talent at a televised audition. Fellow judge Amanda Holden agreed, and gave the group a standing ovation, saying: ‘I thoroughly enjoyed it boys!’ OOTB made it through to the live semi-finals but failed to win either the audience’s or judges’ vote needed to progress to the final. The show’s winners will perform in front of Her Majesty the Queen at the Royal Variety Performance later this year.


OOTB is an imaginative all-Oxford, all-male, a cappella musical troupe: the members arrange all their own music, ‘capturing the essence of original tracks while integrating into them vibrant, exciting and unprecedented ideas to ensure their show is always fresh and animated.’ Nick Barstow (2010, Music) and Selali Fiamanya (2010, Medicine) both joined the group when they arrived at St Catherine’s last October.


OOTB has received multiple plaudits since it was founded in 2000, including recently winning ‘Best Musicality’ at Voice Festival UK. Nick and Selali told CatzEye that anyone who wants to know more about the group should visit its website (www.ootb.org.uk) or follow on Twitter (@ootboxford). The group will be returning to Edinburgh this year to perform at the Fringe Festival. ■


Award-winning student


journalist A St Catherine’s undergraduate has been awarded the Philip Geddes Memorial Prize for 2011. Camilla Turner (2009, History), currently editor of student newspaper Cherwell, scooped the £1,000 prize, which is awarded annually to Oxford’s most promising student journalist. The judges were


particularly impressed by the quality of her investigative stories and unanimously agreed to award Camilla the prize.


Camilla’s work has also been recognised on the national stage as she won the 2010 Reporter of the Year prize at the Guardian Student Media Awards. Extending the reach of her journalism well beyond Oxford, Camilla plans to travel to Ghana this summer to work for a newspaper based there. ■


Wilfrid Francis Knapp MA 1924 – 2011


The College is sad to announce the death of Emeritus Fellow Wilfrid Knapp on 30 March 2011. Wilfrid arrived in Oxford as an Exhibitioner at New College in 1942. He returned to New following a year at the Sorbonne but soon joined St Catherine’s Society as Tutor in Politics in 1950. Wilfrid was one of the College’s Founding Fellows and will be dearly missed by the whole St Catherine’s community. A full obituary will follow in The Year.


Wilfrid Knapp Memorial Fund The College hopes to establish scholarships honouring Wilfrid’s contribution to the College. If you would like to contribute please make cheques payable to St Catherine’s College writing ‘Wilfrid Knapp Memorial Fund’ on the reverse. Please contact Saira Uppal in the Development Office (saira.uppal@stcatz.ox.ac.uk or 01865 281585) if you would like further information.


Wallace Watson Award


winner announced Thomas Mallon (2009, English) is the winner of this year’s Wallace Watson Award. He plans to undertake a solo trek through Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam following a section of the Ho Chi Minh trail that formed the principal supply-line to central South Vietnam during the Vietnam War. The journey has particular significance for Thomas, an American, as his grandfather was stationed during the war in Kontum, where the trail ends.


Thomas was announced as the winner at the Wallace Watson Award Lecture on 10 March, where last year’s recipient, William Cannell- Smith (2008, Mathematics), gave an account of his cycling trip across a section of the Alps from Geneva to Monte Carlo. A full account of the lectures will appear in The Year. ■


‘In the forty-two years in which he has been associated with St Catherine’s, longer than any of the rest of us, no-one has made a greater contribution to the foundation and formation


of the College.’ Lord Bullock, the Founding Master of St Catherine’s College, when Wilfrid Knapp retired.


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L Thomas Mallon (right) receiving the Wallace Watson Award from Teddy Watson.


J Camilla Turner (centre) at the Guardian Student Media Awards. Photograph by Marta Szczerba.


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