“Tim! Tim! Tim!” is a chant anyone who’s made it to ‘Country Roads’ after a Trevs formal will be familiar with. The DJ in question, Tim Fowler, has been a familiar face around the college since 2003 (with some brief visits whilst he was a student at University College), as librarian, painter, DJ, and HEX contributor.

Joining the college as a librarian was “kind of accidental”, Tim told HEX. His daughter had just started nursery and, having stayed in the college system as a Mentor, Tim was looking for work after being a full-time Dad over the past few years. “I went to the interview and said, well, I know the colleges, and the library stuff I’m sure I can pick up,” he said.

Whilst he wasn’t a student, Tim wanted to make sure his face was known around Trevs. “Writing for HEX was one of the ways that I wanted everyone to get to know who I am,” he said. It was a way of saying “hi, this is me, I can be funny, I can write interesting stuff, and I run the library.”

The idea was proposed “one night in the bar” by the Editors, and Tim recalls his first article being about the Eden Project, “which I had been quite disappointed by, so I wrote a satirical article about it.”

I think Trevs has always been a startingly creative place, and a place where people feel free to express themselves in that way. It’s remarkable.

Across the years, he contributed a huge range of pieces, from satire about the college being horrendously over-subscribed, to a funny list of all the things “the BBC tells you you should be afraid of.”

The HEX then was a lot different to the content we produce now. Whilst Tim admits there was “quite serious stuff,” he also added that “there was really silly stuff that probably wouldn’t get published now. There was a bog sheet and things, who was snogging who.”

Whilst HEX takes a different form now – alongside a shift in social culture across universities – Tim thinks it still shares that unique creativity that comes from Trevs. Whilst it might be a small college, “it’s not about how many you’ve got. It’s what they are,” Tim says.

“I think Trevs has always been a startingly creative place, and a place where people feel free to express themselves in that way. It’s remarkable. Someone once said to me, Trevs is an easy place to be different, and I loved that,” he said, “It doesn’t matter what that difference is.”

Image via Tim Fowler