Barry McKay, described Hull as down to earth, a defender of the "underprivileged, the misunderstood and the working class".

BBC: Alan Hull: memorial mooted for Lindisfarne lead singer

Proposed in January in a White Paper on higher education, the idea aroused a mixture of despair (from universities that think they already do everything possible to attract the miserably small number of qualified but underprivileged applicants available) and fury (from middle-class parents, who felt thrift and diligence were being penalised).

ECONOMIST: Social engineering