Over the course of four series, student sitcom Fresh Meat has documented uni life in all its tequila-slamming, lecture-skipping, supremely awkward glory. Now the show is coming to an end, with the six housemates gearing up for graduation and grown-up life. But what does adulthood hold for Vod, Oregon, Kingsley, Josie, JP and Howard? We got the show’s cast together to predict who will end up working for Mumsnet, who will haunt the student house like Freddy Krueger and who will bring about a financial crisis through “sheer incompetence”.

Vod (Zawe Ashton)

Zawe Ashton as Vod Photograph: Channel 4 Picture Publicity

Perpetually penniless, drug-guzzling literature student, and arguably the coolest character on TV at the moment (though more insecure than she likes to let on)

ZAWE ASHTON It’s really hard to think about where Vod might be in 10 years because she’s someone who doesn’t think about the future at all. As soon as you try and pin her down, she ceases to be Vod.

GREG MCHUGH Anything you speculate about Vod, she would absolutely go against it. She could be living in some sort of Hell’s Angels get-up in middle America, or she could be a schoolteacher in Carlisle.

KIMBERLEY NIXON Do you think we’ll all meet up at Vod’s funeral but it turns out she faked it?

ZA I would love that! I think that’s the movie.

KN It’s the five of us in a pub going: “To Vod”. And then she turns up, saying: “Not so fast…”

ZA I think it would be more her going: “Guys, I’m in deep!”

JOE THOMAS It would be a scam gone wrong, like that canoe thing.

ZA Or I would like to think that, because she always attracts such bizarre and otherworldly opportunities because of her general lack of fear of life, that Vod becomes an accidental Mark Zuckerberg… stay with me! She has invented an era-defining app, by accident.

JT What I like about this answer is that as part of your answer you literally have to come up with an app.

CHARLOTTE RITCHIE So what app did she invent then?

KN One that helps you find your nearest drug dealer.

ZA Silk Road in app form.

JACK WHITEHALL Tinder for dealers.

ZA Or just a gender-fluid Tinder.

KN Ginder.

JW I think in 10 years’ time we may have moved on from Tinder…

JT [Mock-outraged] Tinder will never die!

ZA I’m not on it, unfortunately.

CR Or fortunately for everyone else!





Oregon (Charlotte Ritchie)

Charlotte Ritchie as Oregon.

Student union president and wannabe political activist. Had an affair with her literature professor, which went about as well as you’d expect

CR I feel like Oregon doesn’t really survive very well outside of institutions, so there’s a real possibility she’ll be in a… mental institution.

KN Just for the structure.

CR Just for the structure and the regime. I think if she carries on the way she’s going, she’s not going to have a very happy life. She needs to chill out. I hope in 10 years she’s relaxed and found one thing she should be doing. Hopefully she’ll be working somewhere outside London, living with a nice person.

GM Over the course of the series she becomes incredibly megalomaniacal. Maybe she’ll go into politics or PR.

JW She could write for Tatler!

CR She could write for Tatler, as well as being in Tatler.

KN Do you know what I read about the other day? Teen Tatler. It’s an actual thing and it’s horrendous!

JW What about one of those mumsy mags?

CR Good Housekeeping? Yeah, she would be all right with not being a leading literary poet, and she would write for Good Housekeeping.

JW Or interviewing Gyles Brandreth for the Waitrose magazine…

CR Exactly.

ZA Maybe our characters live together. Vod’s a really famous existential poet and Oregon writes for Mumsnet.





Kingsley (Joe Thomas)

Joe Thomas as Kingsley.

Geology student and thwarted Bob Dylan wannabe. Sports a trilby, despite repeated warnings from his housemates that it makes him look like an arse

JT We’ve already talked about this, and I’ve decided that Kingsley’s going to be a nurse.

JW Yes, but tell them the specific area in which he’ll nurse…

JT OK. Well… he’s the person who shaves you before you have an operation.

JW That’s literally all he does.

JT [Defensively] But he’s the UK’s top man for that. Whenever it comes up, they’re like: “Get Doctor” – actually, I don’t think he’s a doctor – “Get Nurse Owen!”

JW He knows his way around a pensioner’s balls. He’s like Zorro [makes swishing noise].

KN He’d have his own little case with his razor in it.

JT He’d have a razor case with the mod symbol on it. He’ll still be wearing a trilby.

JW Talking to all the patients about his band.

CR Trying to get all the medics to join it.

JT We’re called Operation Rock!

ZA Kingsley running the hospital radio station, that would be funny.

GM He might make a terrible mistake and become a lecturer to be a bit cooler, to tap into his intellectual side… and then have a breakdown. I don’t see it ending well for Kingsley. He needs a strong lady in his life.

ZA Is he still pining after Josie?

KN I think that they will be friends who laugh about the fact that they used to shag. When Josie breaks up with Kingsley, it’s the thing I’m most proud of her doing in the entire time she’s been there. She cares for him a lot, and she knows that staying with him will ruin him. She has to pull back and say: “I love you and I think you’re brilliant and I want to know you in 10 years’ time, so let’s stop this.” It was quite hard to shoot that scene.

Josie (Kimberley Nixon)

Kimberley Nixon as Josie. Photograph: Mark Johnson

Former dentistry student – thrown out for attempting to perform surgery while drunk – now studying pharmacology. Enjoys a beverage or 16, as you might have guessed

CR What would Josie’s job be, Kim?

JT Yeah, get on with it, Kim!

JW A pharmacist?

KN Yeah. She could work in Boots as a pharmacist and really look down at the people on the other side of the counter.

CR Giving looks to people based on their prescriptions.

KN Really judging them. And giving the morning-after pill talk to people in the little room, and loving the power of being able to sign off on it.

ZA Has she completed a 12-step programme for her drinking?

JW She’s on to prescription drugs now.

CR She’s got the access to them, after all.

ZA Nurse Jackie! YOU ARE NURSE JACKIE!

JT She takes so much codeine.

KN But Josie has always had a thing with drugs where she thinks you should treat them with respect, unlike booze. Booze she will hammer. But drug use she’s always been very straight down the line. There is a bit in the show where Vod tries to tap into Josie as a drugs contact and she just shuts her down.

JT I think she’d be working in a GUM clinic, filling out that standard form: “So, how many partners have you had? Oh yeah? That many?!”

KN Working in sexual health would be her dream. Getting things out of people. She’ll be like: “It’s on the form, I have to ask this.”

ZA She loves to put a coil in…

KN Oh yeah, she’ll pop a coil in, in under three seconds. Like tiddlywinks.

CR You went far too far with that one.

ZA Moving seamlessly on to JP...





JP (Jack Whitehall)

Jack Whitehall as JP.

Jack Wills-sporting posho, who’s actually far more sensitive than his bantz-loving exterior suggests. Studies geology. Thinks James ‘Blunters’ Blunt is a total ledge

JW JP will be in the City, doing something he hates, working for a bank, masterminding a financial crisis in 10 years’ time.

KN Unknowingly masterminding it.

JW Through sheer incompetence.

GM JP is so easily led, I think if anyone told him: “This is a sure-fire financial scheme”, he would do it. I can definitely see him bringing down capitalism.

JW He’ll be in All Bar One after every workday, getting chucked out of the toilets of the Canary Wharf branch. Either that, or he’ll be like that guy who started the petition to get Clarkson back on the BBC. Guido Fawkes. A big, posh, rightwing guy who feels he needs to defend people’s right to racially offend people.

GM JP will become a Foxtons monster.

ZA The thing is, though, JP’s actually quite sensitive. I wonder if 10 years down the line he meets a really hippy girl, renounces all his possessions and joins a freegan cult.

KN But takes his Nespresso machine with him.

JW He still owns the student house, though. Maybe he’s running it as a brothel.

CR With Madame Vod in charge.





Howard (Greg McHugh)

Greg McHugh as Howard.

Deeply geeky geology student and former abattoir worker. Perpetually unlucky in love. Gets annoyed when people assume he likes Lord Of The Rings

GM I think Howard is destined for one slightly unfortunate relationship after another.

ZA Oh, yeah. That’s a definite.

GM It hasn’t worked out at uni, and I think that’s right; I don’t think Howard or the show would be as interesting if he suddenly found genuine love.

ZA Greg and I have really mourned the fact that we’ve never revisited Howard and Vod’s brief romance in series one. We had so much fun filming that. I hope that in the future there might be some hook-up between them. Romantic, not sexual!

GM I think Howard will end up in Ordnance Survey, out in the field somewhere. He’ll most definitely want to work on his own. He hates small talk.

ZA He might have donated his body to some kind of robotic experiment…

GM Whatever happens, he has to leave the house, to exit his Fritzl-like den. I think it’s a bit of a curse and he needs to break it.

KN Howard could go either way. He could languish in the house awaiting the new “fresh meat” or he could have been fundamentally changed by his experiences, and finally step out into the big, bad world.

GM Or maybe Howard takes a really bad turn and becomes the janitor of the university in a kind of Nightmare On Elm Street way. Half Freddy Krueger, half Miss Havisham. Fresh Meat turns into a horror-based show.

ZA Or I wonder if Channel 4 go: “They shouldn’t have really ended it.” And like Skins we are all recast with younger models.

JW But with me as the landlord.

ZA JP’s the landlord, and Howard still lives there.

KN Well, I definitely wouldn’t watch it.

The final series of Fresh Meat will air on Channel 4 early this year