Every year, the University of Oxford releases a short, charming video to wish the sort of people who look this stuff up on YouTube Season’s Greetings (even though the University celebrates what’s unequivocally Christmas, with a small side of Hanukkah, full-time for five weeks each year). For 2017, it’s a sweet video about the friendship between a bird and a Magdalen gargoyle. The video’s pathos suggests the Westgate John Lewis had spread its marketing influence right down the High Street.
But really, none of that matters. Because today I discovered the unbelievable brilliance of the 2013 video, a cracktastic mixture of Aardman animation and the talking head from Art Attack, a surreally inexplicable vision that the university – with all its choir videos, and science, and a really adorable light show in the vaulted ceiling of Exeter College Chapel – can never hope to beat. For the twentieth day of December, I give you: Oxford’s Unruly Objects. There’s a lot to love.
Season’s Greetings, one and all.
CLAMOROUS VOICE 