Alumnus to be proud of no 117 is, to your amazement, Sir Ronald Ernest Dearing, who can boast nine degrees. Only one, in economics from the University of Hull, was secured by the conventional route. But in the last decade Sir Ron has become a serial accumulator of the honorary variety, from Staffordshire, Durham, Nottingham, Hull (again), Humberside, Northumbria, the Open University and the Council for National Academic Awards. But anyone seeking the intellectual roots of Sir Ron's report should see the item in his Who's Who entry: "Recreation: car boot sales."