Fresh Meat

Its the start of the Spring Term and Kingsley has come back with a new image: he's grown a soul patch and started yo-yoing. Josie too is turning over a new leaf by making friends with Heather, a girl from her course and a self-styled mental dental. JPs great friend from Stowe, Giles, has transferred from Exeter, but he has some big news which is about to shatter JPs world. Oregons relationship with Tony Shales is now over, but shes swapped horses, and is now gearing up to become Jean Shales new intern, hoping to make a big splash in the dog-eat-dog world of contemporary poetry. Vod is skint. She owes everybody money and is trying to pay them back in Nectar Points. Howard is moonlighting in the local abattoir and has started to bring home loose meat jazz meat - to the consternation of all the other housemates. Paul Lamb, the invisible housemate, has now moved out, so the group are charged with the task of finding a replacement. Despite their best efforts they are eventually saddled with Sabine a 29-year-old PhD student from Amsterdam, who is clean-living, straight-talking and sober. They refer to her as the Dutch Adult.

A spate of muggings on campus culminates in Howard getting mugged for his shoes although the muggers didnt actually ask for his shoes, so theres some debate about whether he was actually mugged or whether he has just given away his shoes. Meanwhile Josie reacts badly to the news that her new BFF Heather has started dating Kingsley. When Sabine offers to hold a self-defence class for the girls in the house, Josie accidentally breaks Heathers arm. Vods penury has forced her to get a job as a chambermaid in a budget hotel, but much to her annoyance shes really good at it and quickly gets promoted. In between shifts, she becomes JPs unofficial nurse while he recovers from the mumps. Her patience is tested, however, when Ralph and Cunty Sykes turn up and JP treats Vod like a scullery maid has she woken up in Downton Abbey? On her way home from campus one night, Oregon mistakes Tony for a mugger and punches him in the face.

During a student networking event for the oil industry, a slick BP executive earmarks Kingsley for great things and offers him a coveted ticket to a “Students to Watch Brackets North” event, which sends Howard into a paroxysm of jealousy and rage. Determined not to lose out ever again to nice guys with good haircuts, Howard undertakes a massive (and disastrous) image overhaul, from which Vod is forced to save him.

It’s the Easter break, and everybody is heading to JP’s mega-pile in the country for a weekend long freak out, consisting of drugs and revision on a continuous loop. However, things are thrown off course when they arrive to find the house has been put up for sale and a Russian oligarch is coming to view it on Monday.

Josie and Heather go on a massive alcoholic bender the night before their first practical. Heather can hack it but Josie, a total lightweight, turns up the next day ready to drill with her hands still shaking from the night before. She accidentally drills a hole in a womans cheek and is automatically suspended. Adding to her misery is the fact that she left the keys in the front door, practically inviting an intruder who duly obliges by intruding and nicking all their stuff. Josies reaction is to fake a break-in in order to claim the insurance, but things are complicated by the fact that one of the items JP lost was an original David Hockney, worth 250, 000. Oregon attempts to go on a man-fast but then swiftly breaks it when she meets and falls for Dylan, the sexy librarian. JP makes a local friend Al the Handyman, who is actually from Manchester. Vod falls in love, but quickly discovers the cure. Howard turns detective in a bid to catch the intruder, but his deductions lead him somewhere quite unexpected.

Kingsley is uncharacteristically furious when Dan the geology tutor seemingly forgets about the very existence of sedimentary rock during a seminar. Spurred on by a righteous sense of getting-his-moneys-worth, Kingsley makes an official complaint. Unfortunately it directly precedes the annual geology field trip to the Pennines, leaving Kingsley thinking he may have chosen the worst possible time to make an enemy. Several hours later, with JP stuck up the side of a mountain, and all three boys seemingly abandoned, it begins to look like he was right. Meanwhile Josie learns that she has been kicked off her course for good, but chooses not to tell anyone as she petitions to get back on. Sexy Dylan, from the library, begins to look like Oregons ideal man but then he drops a bombshell when we lets slip that his father is Tony Shales. Money problems are again rearing their ugly head for Vod, when she learns she has to pass a urine sample in order to receive the next instalment of her RAF scholarship. The problem is her urine is 90% Class As so, with her entire future at university on the brink, she is forced to hunt down some elusive clean piss.