The Truth About Carnage

In await of Sunday’s event, we speak to the people behind the notorious boozy bar crawl.


Newcastle’s most controversial student night is back for the second time this semester and it seems the new line up is far from putting us students off the boozy bar crawl.

The infamous night out hits the city again this Sunday and already has eyebrows raised as a result of its hefty track record.

Four years ago a Sheffield Hallam student was caught peeing on a war memorial and it’s antics like these that have led to the notorious bar crawl being dubbed ‘the most debauched student event’ that, according to some, promotes binge drinking.

Steven Hughes, a press officer for Carnage UK, says: “If it was promoting binge drinking our flyers would be emblazoned with £1 drinks offers and discounts.”

“We don’t need to advertise that because we’re exceptionally popular anyway, it’s an expensive ticket price but you’re getting a quality brand name and service.”

The event does itself no favours with its past fancy dress themes including ‘tight and bright’, ‘pimps and hoes’ and ‘nympho nurses & dirty doctors.’

Sunday’s bar crawl, which sold out at the start of the week takes a much safer, but equally risky, emergency services theme.

Steven explains: “We shortlist themes that are nominated and say if you could pick one of these which one would you pick?”

“Newcastle was actually one of the cities included in the pimps and hoes poll, so students were highly demographic in choosing that theme.”

It may be hard to believe but Varsity, who run Carnage, actually spend a phenomenal amount of money on safety and security at each event, paying for the emergency services and police to attend and keep things- well us- in check.

Steven Hughes says: “Some people say you must be expecting trouble. They have police officers at football matches, they’re not expecting trouble, it’s a measure.”

At £10 a t-shirt, noticeably pricey for a student night, the event goes through four bars before reaching an end venue which has recently been shaken up for us Newcastle party-goers.

Students will now stagger through Tiger Tiger, Sam Jacks, City Vaults and Revolution before ending the night in Digital rather than LQ, allowing more people to attend the event and less shoes to be lost as a result of Liquid’s abnormally sticky carpets.

Many students have boycotted Carnage in the past due to choice of LQ as its main venue, but are now crawling out of the woodwork and donning their tshirts.

We’ve yet to find out whether this line-up will be a change for the better but if the carpets are anything to go by, I’m sure it will be.