Have I ever told you the one about meeting the 45-year-old leaders of the Romanian youth delegation? It was back in the Iron Curtain days and I was representing the National Union of Students at an international event and these balding men in shiny suits wanted a “bilateral” to discuss getting one over on their equally elderly comrades in the Soviet youth delegation.

It struck me then, as it does now, that while there are lots of youth organisations run ostensibly for young people, there are very few run by them. The NUS is one of those organisations. It has existed for nearly 100 years and over that time has done a rather adult job of representing the UK’s scholars — even when I was