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Alumni to be proud of numbers two and three: Corpus Christi College, Oxford boasted as undergraduates, at one and the same time, Roger Waterhouse, now vice chancellor of Derby University and Richard Gott, who resigned as literary editor of The Guardian after the revelation of indiscreet dealings with the KGB.

Their first meeting is recorded by Gott in Corpuscles, history fellow Brian Harrison's collection of memoirs by former inmates: "Opposite me was a man (Roger Waterhouse) wearing a garish blue sweater and no jacket. I was shocked: it was the first time I had ever consciously met someone from a grammar school.

"Did this fellow not realise, or innately understand, that wearing such attire was extraordinarily inappropriate? Apparently not."