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Thursdays, of course, aren’t meant to go like that. It’s not normal. A Thursdayis a Tuesday with Friday’s lipstick on its collar; less harrowing than Monday,less banal than Wednesday, but still, undeniably,
midweek 
. Thursday is notthe sort of day on which one ends up lying to a
Sunday Times
reporter aboutmediaeval history, and its connection to the debauchery of Oxford students.It’s just not done.As Thursdays go, it hadn’t looked to amount to much when it began: noportentous telephone calls, no strange-looking parcels with exotic postmarks,and nary a zany escapade in sight. Such, as I had found to my chagrin, waslife in what we had only known as
 After-University 
. There was still drinking tobe done and wackiness to be had, there was just less time in which to do it.And it was still a Thursday. So close to the weekend, and yet so dismally far away.It was a wondrous moment, then, when Sue Reid hove across the horizon,notebook in one hand, sword of fair play in the other (the shield of truthclashed with her eye-liner), looking for the Assassins, one of Oxford’s moreexclusive drinking societies, only ever spoken of in hushed tones.Alex Gibson and I were the end of a long and winding trail for Sue: she hadcome to Oxford looking for the Assassins, and had found almost everythingbut. She had had thrown the harsh light of day onto the Guild of Assassins (agroup of undergraduates who hit each other with socks, and “kill” each other with water pistols), a group so secret that they have a stall at Fresher’s Fair every year. She, apparently, had a mysterious contact named Hugo, a major mover and groover on the party scene of Oxford, who had put her in touchwith the Maenads (more on them later), who had put her in touch with us. Twoex-University students with wicked senses of humour, and a good helping of boyish good-looks (well, what’s the point of writing this kind of article withoutindulging in a little blatant self-promotion), and a frustrated
 penchant 
for play-acting had been given the opportunity to talk to a national newspaper. Thiswas
not 
an everyday sort of Thursday (of course it wasn’t, even the mostdrear of people can’t wish for Thursday every day).The day before (Wednesday the 18
th
of April) Sue had spoken to theMaenads, a female drinking society whose members went under the names of classical goddesses, who also organise large parties each year in and aroundOxford. However, this, apparently, was not good enough for our intrepid journalist, she wanted to speak to the Assassins, which was never going to bean easy thing to achieve. So, the only thing to do was to arrange an interviewwith someone purporting to be an Assassin, but to emphasise that the
real 
story was with the Maenads. With any luck we could ensure that the story wasnot the usual summer tabloid tale of: “Top Toff Students Take Killer DrugsAnd Don’t Care Who Foots the Bill: Some of Britain’s brightest and best werelast night involved in a wild sex orgy in the Cotswolds, where, just last night,they smoked smack e-balls (known as Zippers) and gulped down hugequantities of crack marijuana!” With any luck.
 
And so it came to pass that on a Thursday afternoon in April, Alex and I weresitting in a pub in Oxford, making up the most outrageous lies we could. Weknew the story she wanted, but had sat down for half an hour and made up amuch better one. Or so we thought.We gave her a story with all the elements of a great novel: sex, betrayal andmediaeval warrior monks. We littered it with historical details, tracing thehistory of the Assassins back to the eighteenth century, linking it withAugustus, duke of Sussex and son of George III, with Charles d’EyncourtTennyson, and with Admiral Sir Sidney Smith, who defended Acre in the1790s. We explained, using facts gleaned from Templar websites, during our short period of preparation, that the society was split into factions: theTemplars, the Cathars, and the Hospitallers (this group being subdivided intothe Knights of Rhodes and the Knights of Malta). We gave a detailedchronology of the in-fighting between these factions, and the reasons for itover the last few years, and how this had led to the crisis which now existedwithin the society, and had also led to the predominance of the Maenads.A summary check of any of these details would have led anyone to becomesuspicious: we had dropped enough dubious historical and masonic lore in tomake even the most hardened conspiracy-theorist think we were talkingcrazy-talk, and advise that we be kept in the softest room in the asylum. Therewere ridiculous moments galore, in the claims we made for mysteriousScottish castles and our re-enactments of the burning of Jacques de Molay.We couldn’t even really keep our story straight, having problems explaininghow if every member’s sons were invited to join, and open invitations weregiven, the membership numbers had remained constant over two centuries.There were sticky moments, and I’d like to say we handled them with theaplomb of the accomplished liar, but I fear we did not, and when Sue rang uslater, to explain that they were delaying publication for a week, we had thehorrible image of a researcher at the paper laughing in her face, and killingthe story.Back in the interview, we were being pressed for names, she needed these if the story was to hold any water. Could we confirm Tom Parker-Bowles’membership? Or that of James Archer? Now, neither of us knew much aboutlibel law, but we were both of the opinion that this might count, if someonewere feeling litigious, and besides, we didn’t know, so we stayed silent. After all, a secret society should have some secrets, shouldn’t it?And that was that, the deed was done, and we congratulated ourselves onhaving given her a story with a little more interest than the usual, even if it wasridiculous. Who knew, perhaps on reading something so utterly ridiculous,people might think twice before believing everything they read in thenewspapers. The press had exploited the typical story of Oxford debaucheryfor years, wasn’t it fair that Oxford debauchees could now exploit the presslooking for that story?
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