Tab’s BIGGEST BNOCs: Special Mentions + Top 50

Yesterday, The Tab revealed Cambridge’s Top 10 Biggest Names on Campus. While these are probably more MNOCs than BNOCs, we’d like to draw your attention to other figures on the list.

Also, we can reveal the TOP FIFTY.

Muhammad Asadullah Khan (#61, 320 votes, 17.96% recognition, Trinity)

While Khan failed to break into the Top 50, he inspired the competition’s biggest grassroots campaign to make him Cambridge’s Biggest Name on Campus.

Unfortunately, after several algorithms were set up, The Tab regrettably had to annul the automated votes. The above figure is an estimated figure and it will, unfortunately, never be known how much #FriendsofJustice, his campaign team, managed to increase his name recognition over the time period the campaign was running.

Tactics used included:

• Pigeonholing the entirety of Trinity College’s mailroom with Vote for Muhammad Asadullah Khan pamphlets
• Breaking into a Tab editor’s room to stuff it with dozens of pamphlets.
• Creating at least three campaign videos.
• Starting a change.org petition signed by 148 people demanding that The Tab Cambridge stop “deliberately falsifying Voting Records” in order to keep out a non-Establishment candidate like Khan.

Khan declined to comment.

Thomas Hughes-McLure (#44, 384 votes, 21.55% recognition, Trinity)

Tom’s growing infamy over the course of voting derived from his professional campaign video-making team. The Tab was also subject to an electoral enquiry from a person describing herself as “General Executive Chief Coordinating Officer (GECCO) for THM2016 “Make Cambridge Great Again””.

Tom also gained notoriety during the contest from the growing tension with Cambridge’s Tenth Biggest Name on Campus, Hesham Mashhour, who lambasted #THMNation’s campaign video tactics in an editorial for the Hesham-owned and controlled newspaper, Blue Specs.

After Tom’s campaign team posted an inspirational video of their candidate climbing out of a pool, Mashhour said: “Students are now posting promotional videos of their not so impressive torsos climbing out of swimming pools. I mean if that is the best you have to offer and if that makes you think you’re better than everyone else, proud and arrogant, I really pity you.”

Tom hit back with the following GIF as a Facebook status. It speaks for itself.

Sass.

While Hughes-McLure gained serious traction over the course of the campaign, he failed to make it into the Top 10.

Which is a shame, because if he had we would have run a new Tab TV series, “I’m a BNOC…Get Me Out of Here!” specifically to play up the tensions between Hesham and Tom. Television gold.

Arav Gupta (#38, 408 votes, 22.67% recognition, Pembroke)

Deserves mention for his feature on Students of Cambridge: “It’s funny how quickly things can change, even in this most traditional of towns. Fifty years ago, a cis white male such as myself would have stood proudly on the top rung of the social ladder ….  Have you seen The Tab Cambridge’s competition about Cambridge’s best students (or ‘BNOCs’)? I was on it.

“Many of the people on the list are celebrated and loved wherever they go in Cambridge, but I feel that some (myself included) are under-appreciated by the student body. Rather than perpetuate this disillusionment among the forgotten heroes of the sports field and dancefloor by choosing a student politician or journalist as the biggest BNOC, I hope that you made the correct choice and chose someone more committed to making Cambridge more fun. Me. After all, isn’t that what being a BNOC is all about?”

Credit: Students of Cambridge. Thanks for Joe Binder for permission.

Pembroke – #1 BNOC college

Pembroke did remarkably well for a medium-sized Cambridge college, garnering a grand total of 4919 votes in the Top 50, compared to 3886 for the much larger Trinity.

The Top 50 are as follows, some followed by a nomination anecdote. (Out of the few that were publishable.)

1. Charlotte Ivers – 1,662 – 92.33% – Pembroke (“Will drink anyone under the table. Went as Corbyn to bop. Dominated Union Presidential victory.”)
2. Priscilla Mensah – 1,657 – 92.06% – Girton
3. Oliver Mosley – 1,461 – 81.17% – John’s (“He’s fit as fuck.”)
4. Sachin Parathalingham – 1,158 – 64.33% – King’s (“CUS publicity so wide-reaching that freshers started to suspect he didn’t exist, and was just a front for the organisation.”)
5. Allan Hennessy – 1,032 – 57.33% – Fitzwilliam
6. Chris Jammer – 1,018 – 56.56% – Caius (“Started bulking so people mistake me for him more.”)
7. Lola Olufemi – 989 – 54.94% – Selwyn (“Fanbloodytastic.”)
8. Jamie Roberts – 976 – 54.22% – Queens’
9. Will Popplewell – 973 – 54.06% – Pembroke (“Freshers dressed up as Popplewell for the ‘myths and legends’ bop.”)
10. Hesham Mashhour – 918 – 51.00% – Trinity
11. Jack Lewy – 867 – 48.17% –  Trinity Hall (“He called me a prick when I said I was nominating him.”)
12. Helena Blair – 839- 46.61% – Homerton
13. Charlie Chorley – 814 – 45.22% – Pembroke (“Her name and hometown rhyme.”)
14. Luke Heppenstall West – 659 – 36.61% – Queens’
15. Caroline Calloway – 585 – 32.50% – St Edmund’s
16. Joe Binder – 583 – 32.39% – Fitzwilliam
17. Jack Renshaw – 580 – 32.22% – Sidney Sussex (“Dressed as ‘the follies of neoliberal capitalism’ for Halloween at ArcSoc 2k14 #extraedgy.”)
18. Patrick Brooks – 568 – 31.56% – Fitzwilliam
19. Richard Cartwright – 563 – 31.28% – Jesus
20. Alice Pavey – 561 – 31.17% – Newnham (“I think I’ll have to go out incognito tonight, I’m tired of fresher fans bothering me” and “She was held hostage by the Tanzanian army for trespassing”.)
21. Oscar Powell – 557 – 30.94% – Peterhouse (“Got the Daily Mail to dedicate page 3 to his facial expressions.”)
22. Anthony Rubinstein – 555 – 30.83% – Girton
23. James Hutt – 541 – 30.06% – Pembroke
24. Jack May – 526 – 29.22% – Caius (“One time Jack May slapped me with a newspaper while wearing a turtleneck and red suede shoes. It was iconic.”)
25. Richard Ollington – 521 – 28.94% – Pembroke (“Keenest person in the world.”)
26. Joe Shalom – 490 – 27.22% – Queens’ (“Making an anti-semitic joke in a union debate, without people knowing he is Jewish.”)
27. Cornelius Roemer – 477 – 26.50% – Trinity (“Benevolent dictator of Trinity, Archenemy of Priscilla, Yang of CUSU Council, Fighter for streetlights and wider beds.”)
28. Seth Kruger – 464 – 25.78% – Caius
29. Salman Khan – 460 – 25.56% – Downing (“Appears to know everything, anywhere, anytime.”)
30. Adam P. Goucher – 456 – 25.33% – Trinity (“Free May Ball ticket for someone with 1000+ Instagram followers.”)
31. William Fitzalan-Howard – 452 – 25.11% – Robinson (“One time I saw WFH wearing army pants and flip flops. So I went out, and I bought army pants and flip flops.”)
32. Jonah Hauer-King – 449 – 24.94% – John’s
33. India Dunn – 443 – 24.61% – Trinity
34. Christof Epaminondas – 435 – 24.17% – Trinity (“More girls swooning over him than hair on his head.”)
35. Jacob Lange – 425 – 23.61% – Selwyn (“Literally has a t-shirt with his face and ‘#lange’ on it.”)
36. Marthe de Ferrer – 420 – 23.33% – John’s (“She hates The Tab.”)
37. Arav Gupta – 408 – 22.67% – Pembroke (“Guptacular Spectacular.”)
38. Declan Amphlett – 403 – 22.39% – Trinity (“My favourite Footlight.”)
39. Sam Brooks – 397 – 22.06% – Robinson
40. Rebecca Cusack – 395 – 21.94% – Homerton
41. Freya Sanders – 394 – 21.89% – Murray Edwards
42. Jack Barden de Lacroix – 391 – 21.72% – Clare (“He can pout well enough to have modelled in the CUCFS.”)
43. Thomas Hughes McLure – 384 – 21.33% – Trinity (“Crown Prince of the Cambridge Glitterati whose Instagram account @thomas_hughes_mclure leaves little of the human anatomy to the imagination.”)
44. Josh Jackson – 379 – 21.06% – Queens’ (“The guy who wanted to start a revolution against the Queens’ JCR and establish a student soviet instead.”)
45. Ben Coumbe – 377 – 20.94% – Churchill (“Organiser of Cambridge Dolphins, Campaigner to save the NHS.”)
46. Daniel Lafferty – 373 – 20.72% – Queens’ (“He’s secretly plotting for his “triumphant return” to the new offer holder’s group in 2016.”)
47. John Papantoniou – 370 – 20.56% – Trinity (“Has been described as the Fermat’s Last Theorem of the Notorious Chirpse – a thing of inscrutable beauty and fiercesome power.”)
48. Alex Cartlidge – 356 – 19.78% -Fitzwilliam
49. Hugo Norbury – 352 – 19.56% – Downing (“Vox populi vox dei.”)

And last of all, to finish on a positive note:

50. Tim Lornie – 351 – 19.70% – Downing (“A man who often forgets his keys, strongly believes in being late to everything, including concerts at St John’s, a vegan, helps the homeless, loves EVERYONE, self-effacing to the extreme, a thinker, a believer, a do-er, a fighter (and no I am not secretly in love with him).”)

That is all. You can wait till next year for your celebrity fix.