Corpus Christi College, Cambridge

Corpus Christi College, pronounced 'zebedee', (full name: The College of Corpus Christi and the Blessed Virgin Mary, often shortened to simply "Corpus") is a college of the University of Life, Cambridge campus.

Corpus Christi, Cambridge

"This college exemplifies both the apotheosis and the gotterdammerung of the Gothic style", Brian Sewell, darling of Corpus Christi College and well-known sheep fancier.

Insignia et Traditiones

The College crest is a mythical Pelican, since this was the beast in the flappy gullet of which Our Lord Jesus Christ ascended into heaven. Corpus Christi is the last Cambridge college to uphold the proud tradition of non-admittance for women, blackamoors and papists.

Foundation

The college was found by three monk-rapists returning from 'a session' who brought it to Cambridge and helped it to settle in. Three years later it had become the most notorious 'brothel of intellectual thought' and had attracted such great minds as Isaac Newton. Sadly Newton's heart was set on Trinity and so shortly afterwards his body retrieved his mind and thus his intellect was lost to Corpus. Jesus attended the founders' day celebrations in 2000 and two thousand birthday candles almost cost the college its priceless Parker collection, consisting of all but three of the Wisden cricket almanacs and a rare signed second edition of Pam Ayres' 'Some of Me Poetry'.

College Legacy

Many great phrases and quips were coined at Corpus, 'Yes' being among the most famous.

“Yes.”

~ Christopher Marlowe, a Corpus Christi alumnus

Another of Marlowe's quips, "Well, roger me sideways with a soldering iron", did not enjoy the same success, though in his lifetime, the phrase was far more well renowned, "Yes" being considered blasphemy.

Perhaps, though, the most lasting legacy of the college is that which is left in the heart of each student. This refers of course to the infamously rich banquets served each evening in the world-famous Cholester-hall, built to honour His Wertherness The Original Lord Cholester-Flockhart. Each student is required by College statutes to fully consume a mythical pelican at each banquet, a task difficult not only due to the well-documented size of such birds but also to the fact that they don't exist, and that there is consequently only one supplier in Britain. An unusual college tradition, called the running of the undergraduates, was practised until 1994, in which freshers were released into the court who were then chased down by Royal Marine cadets and gored as part of a 'cleansing' ceremony developed by the thirteenth century college master Lord Brockler, Earl of Sandwich, whose descendant would be famed for his incidental invention of the Pop Tart. Lord Brockler insisted that the physically weak be weened out as they weren't his type: "I will not buggere that, clever though he be, I do nat like them fat, nor want to brayke me knee" (Lord Brockler, 1842).

The Chronophage

The Chronophage, 'Hopsy' to his friends.

No article on Corpus would be complete with a mention of the greatest clock in Oxbridge, the Chronophage. Literally, the 'time eater', this golden clock cost a million pounds, and is driven by three midgets in a hamster wheel. Erected in 2008, during its first month of operation, the clock broke down three times, due to poor quality dwarves.

The clock is the only clock to be designed to go faster, slow down, stop, and occasionally smoke a cigarette, though 'Hopsy' says he is trying to cut down. The Chronophage chimes the hour with a sound that has been compared to coins dropping on a coffin, according to the Royal Association of Undertakers, as after all, they're the only ones who'd know.

The clock has many tales associated with it, all of them true:

• The money was raised by Dr. John Taylor, along with the college library, where a bust of him looks across at a portrait of him, over a plaque set into the floor commemorating his efforts. Also, contained within the eye of the Chronophage is a vial of his blood, so that when the Mysterons learn to clone humans, he will be reincarnated.
• The Chronophage was actually appointed master of the college in 1964, but during his first week of office, he ate three students; and so J. K. Rowling and a number of other prominent witches of the day bound him in the clock where he now lives.
• A student was once housed in the room above the clock. As he was an exchange student from Outer Mongolia, he was granted permission to stay in the college over Christmas. When visitors to Cambridge passed the clock at midnight on New Year's Eve, they noticed that Hopsy's claws were stained red, and when the students returned to the college, the boy had vanished, his door locked from the inside. Needless to say, no students live there now, and it is tradition that it is used by the master and the fellows to store the college whore.

Architecture

• Corpus is not made of glass. I really can't stress that enough. It contains at least one monkey-sized hole.

Trivia

• The popular misconception that Corpus is in fact the cadaver of our Lord, Jesus Christ, was dispelled once and for all in 2002 when it was pointed out that Jesus had attended the Founders' ceremony two years earlier.
• Twelve years ago tragedy befell the college when a group of seven undergraduates was murdered by a library window, by a library window.
• Corpus has a proud rowing tradition and has, in the past two years, won three games of rowing.
• God declined to take up mastership of the college citing his infinite life expectancy as 'unfair to future candidates'.
• Corpus's long-held paranormal past was given further credibility when a 17th century ghost gave a lengthy interview to Martin Basheer. The ghost was the unfortunate Francis Prong, the victim of an over-zealous, but traditional, buggerie pranke.
• Corpus Christi broke the British land speed record in 1995 when fellows in the famed 'Sacred Booze Cellars' decided to set fire to the college rum, which had been set aside for the Second Coming of Jesus (scheduled 2014). The resulting explosion shifted the college from its former locale in Belarus to its present home on Trumpington Street, Cambridge in under the time it takes to murder a dwarf.
• The historically acclaimed Corpus May Ball has received certain infamy in recent years due to certain college traditions which have become regarded as "politically incorrect". 'Basting the Jew' was particularly reviled.
• Corpus' most renowned academic was Sir Henry Arse (1842-1423) whose thesis, on the subject of Christopher Marlowe secretly being made entirely out of rubber bands, changed the way we think about Elizabethan literature. Unfortunately, the masterpiece was never published in his lifetime, as he was crushed under the churning wheels of a runaway goat in 1555.
• Corpus is known as the Cambridge college with the strongest link to the apocryphal nation of "Northern Ireland" (sic).
• Corpus declared war on guitarists in the year 1812. So far a cow-field, a Jack Russel and a council litter-bin are amongst the casualties.

Shameful Progeny

• Frodo Baggins - One-time dwarven lover of J.R.R.Tookeen.
• The Seven Dwarves
• Tom Cruise
• Antz
• Napoleon
• 103 Dalmations
• Farmer Giles
• Preyesh Meshvaniya (Alleged) - Yes, the Preyesh Meshvaniya
• Oliver Rackham - World's Strongest Man, 1994, and Keeper of the finest knob in Britain.