The Ship of Fools lies rigged and masted, awaiting departure for Cloud Cuckoo Land. But lo! here come a few stragglers. They’re wearing cloth caps and clogs, and carrying buckets of coal. By ’eck, they must be northerners! Clamber aboard, noble savages, we are ready to cast off. Steerage, purser.

You can’t beat a good old stereotype, and when it comes to stereotypes it appears you can’t whack those northern students at the University of York who feel, boo hoo, they are surrounded by intruders from the south. ‘We’re being overrun’ is the gist of it, so they have revived the university’s Northern Society to assert their independence.

Nor are they alone. Northern students at Cambridge have barged into the act like tipsy burglars, and there are signs of activity in the Great Wen, where few folk from the north have ever set foot. What fun it must be, with black-pudding nights and George Formby strum-alongs.

Lucy Morville, a first-year student at York, got togged up as a Pendle witch for a ‘getting-to-know-you’ pub crawl. Of course she did. She’s from Burnley, that strange town in east Lancashire where broom-hoppers are as plentiful as buttercups in May. She’s a slow learner. If you live........

© The Spectator