In or around 1973, I participated in one of the great social engineering experiments ever conducted by the emerging Sociology Department in UCC.  This experiment had its epicentre in that den of iniquity known as the Kampus Kitchen.  The aim of the experiment was to discover if a whole cohort of Munster’s finest could survive on nothing other than copious quantities of Yoplait yoghurt with added orange peel during the course of an academic year.

The Kampus Kitchen was a student restaurant and multi-purpose venue at University College Cork (UCC), located in what is now known as the Kane Building. It was a popular space for students, serving as a restaurant, exam hall, study area, and even a live music venue in the 1970s. Construction of the building was finished in 1971, and the Kampus Kitchen was a beloved student spot for many years after.   All student life was present and, if my memory serves me right, it was always full.  There, would-be student politicians faced the wrath of a rebellious student body, while eager Third Eng and Second Year Commerce made hasty battle plans before taking to the ‘field’ for their Quarry Cup game.

The Quarry Cup at University College Cork (UCC) was an historic inter-class soccer competition that was named after an actual hollowed out limestone quarry and a natural amphitheatre at the heart of the college. The Quarry was to UCC what the Colosseum was to the ancient Romans, a place for heroics and for heroes to display their skill, their bravery and their greatness. This oval-shaped field, with elevated banks, attracted large crowds on game days. The competition began in 1952, making it UCC’s oldest and most successful inter-class soccer competition. To call it a soccer competition was a great disservice to the Beautiful Game because, depending on how the game was going, various elements of Gaelic Football, Rugby Union, and even American Football were often called into play.  Most Quarry Cup games were fiercely contested, with up to 40 faculty teams taking part in the nine-a-side knockout competition.  Games invariably ended in mud-bath conditions.  Alas, the Quarry and its associated cup are now a piece of UCC’s history, with the new imposing Boole Library built right on top of that ‘field of dreams’. For the record, the last team to win the Quarry Cup was a Med. team captained by John Lynch.

Yoplait was the new culinary delight in those halcyon days.  It had begun in France in 1965 when six dairy co-ops merged to market their yoghurt products under one brand. The brand launched with the six-petaled flower logo, each petal representing an original co-op.

Yoplait’s first international expansion was through a franchising agreement with Switzerland in 1969.  The brand reached the United States and Canada in 1971.  In 1973, Yoplait began to be marketed in Ireland under a franchise agreement.

Yoplait initially produced plain-flavoured yoghurt and cream but released its first fruit-flavoured yoghurts in 1967. By 1973, the marketing gurus had decided to give their product away as a kind of first-ever loss-leader to hungry hordes of University students, knowing that when they graduated and got jobs in 1980s Ireland, Yoplait would be on everyone’s shopping list.  Sure enough, today they have become the leading kids brand, as Petits Filous fly off the supermarket shelves as Mum’s and kids’ favourite fromage frais.

Sure enough, by 1978, yoghurt had rightfully taken its place as one of our staple dairy products.  For my sins, after my first full year teaching in Newcastle West, I applied for and was allowed to correct Intermediate  Certificate Geography.  Now, where exam scripts are concerned, it never failed to amaze me the chances chancers will take when rote learning hits the cold reality of the North face of The Eiger! That fateful summer, I learnt that the name of the shipyard in Belfast was Harland and Wolff Tone and that, along with cheese and butter and Yoplait yoghurt, Milk of Magnesia was from now on also to be considered a dairy product!

However, my stint as an examiner that year ended in total disaster! I had learnt the ropes of being an Examiner during those hazy six weeks in June and July, and despite what would be considered today as abysmal postal and telephone communication, I managed to keep my Advising Examiner happy. When I had finished my work, I was meant to take my bag of scripts to the nearest train station for dispatch back to Athlone. I duly delivered my heavy bag of scripts in my trusty Ford Capri to Limerick Junction train station, and I brought my young impressionable brother, Thomas, and one or two of my sisters along for the drive.

Now, car aficionados will know that my top-of-the-range Ford Capri with its 1.6 overhead cam petrol engine, which had languished at the very back of Murphy’s garage in Cahirciveen until it had been recently rescued by my brother Mike, had four pedals instead of the usual three. The fourth pedal, a wonder of Ford ingenuity and engineering, was used to work the intermittent wipers.

Anyway, as we were nearing the Milk Woman’s Cross on our return journey, I began to mess with the pedals and lo and behold, to Thomas’s amazement, the wipers came on by some magic, even though it wasn’t even raining at the time. I repeated this trick a few times and then turned in the gate to our home. Not only had I totally confused Thomas, but unfortunately, I had also confused myself, and instead of pressing on the brakes, I foolishly pressed the accelerator and drove my lovely Capri into the cast-iron stanchion at the butt of our haybarn, doing untold damage to my pride and joy in the process. I earned a grand total of £178 for my correcting efforts that Summer, and Mike McCoy, our local panel beater in Knockaderry, charged me £250 to fix my wounded pride!

The Yoplait Experiment may not have been the only one to thrive in that magical place.  I’m not a great conspiracy theorist, but it strikes me now as too much of a coincidence that there were a number of payphones on campus – in those days of no communications – that could be tampered with so that all calls home were free of charge.  My home number was Kilfinane 126.  Don’t ask me how the scam worked – or was allowed to work – or how I managed to get through to home – but on one occasion, I remember getting my sister, Eileen, who was busy studying for her Leaving Cert, to transcribe a full English essay over that phone line without interruption.  I stood there on a glorious exam swotting May evening, reading my hastily cobbled together essay.  If I remember correctly, the title of that essay was: ‘In the land of the blind, the one-eyed man is king’!

I’m tempted to indulge in just one final conspiracy theory here! I’m convinced that that essay was surreptitiously’harvested’ by that fledgling Sociology Department in UCC, and when the time was ripe, years later, now working from the dungeon-like basement in the new Boole Library, built over that Quarry where once the famous Quarry Cup was played out, they used it as a blueprint for their first global experiment.  It wasn’t the Russians who interfered with those elections in that faraway land of free and brave men, it was nerdy boffins from the Sociology Department in UCC!  They even added a very ingenious subplot: not only was this newly elected King one-eyed, but he had no clothes!