Time for my speech, the big one, here to close off the evening before fading into the world of employment — Oh, tits, a stage invasion. Who is it, the socialists? Father always warned me they’d come for us eventually. No, it’s just that blathering idiot Durcan and his new gang. Doesn’t he know I have a speech to do? Right. Flowers given, hugs exchanged. ‘As if I needed more emotion’, I say in a monotone voice, my algorithms having deduced that this was an emotional event, before pausing for an uncomfortable period and ending my sentence by saying, ‘Tonight.’

‘I respect and admire all of you’, I open, because apparently it’s good to start with a joke. I explain that being a representative comes with a sense of responsibility. The first time I recognised this was when I asked for more lamb hotpot from the Derwent caterers. Lamb hotpot will be the meal of the future, I told them, stressing that lamb hotpot is now and ever shall be. Lamb hotpot remains my biggest, and some say only, success. But since becoming YUSU president, I have had to undergo a difficult journey of understanding students better. Apparently, not all students want lamb hotpot. I had expected to recognise the universal love for lamb hotpot, but it seems no one likes it. Everyday, this surprises, shocks, and inspires me. As do other things.

‘Newspapers reduce us down to buying avocados’, I tell the audience. This is, of course, incorrect. I purchase lamb hotpot on a frequent basis. The incoming Activities Officer Jim Fudge purchases Courtyard burgers, and Mia has spent much of the year purchasing various whetstones and honing rods. I crack a joke about being a theatre student, where I learned how to express a wide range of emotions on stage, which is what I am currently doing, standing on a stage.

I talk about how there aren’t award categories for all sorts of things. Sure, we could have made award categories for these things, but we didn’t. I proclaim: ‘Students do amazing things. Fact. Water is wet. Fact. Koen Lamberts likes spinning chairs. Fact.’ However, I can’t just talk about the brilliant things students do. You’re also total bastards a lot of the time. I tell the audience not to tolerate hate of any kind. You don’t have to tolerate the ugly wine stain on the carpet, but you can certainly cover it up with a Persian rug, my father always said to me. The audience whoop and clap. Yes, I’ve done it. I’ve solved hatred. Up next: lamb hotpot for everyone.

Before that, I wheel out some pithy remarks about Brexit and Trump. That’ll show them. Sure, I may say that Europe is being overturned by ‘fearmongering alt-right’, and incredulously state that the ‘country genuinely believes the answer to our questions is splitting up’, but let’s be clear: YUSU doesn’t take positions. Geopolitics? Nope. Pensions? Definitely not. Nope. Not at all. Lamb hotpot? Naturally, there is no YUSU position here. I waffle on a bit.

‘Let me be clear,’ I say. Somehow, the audience continues listening, despite the fact that whenever someone says ‘let me be clear’, they are going to be quite the opposite. ‘The only thing that makes students powerless are people believing and saying they are,’ I say, therefore helping to make students powerless. But students have all sorts of things, from anger to resilience to venereal diseases, especially the ones in Halifax. I go on saying that ‘we’re proven to have a loud voice’, while I hold the microphone far away from my mouth, making it difficult for people to hear me.

‘Too often I see students expecting to see change happen,’ I declare. Students need to recognise their limited capacity for change. Lamb hotpot or bust. ‘Next time you’re dissatisfied with YUSU, the university, the country, do something about it. Speak. Organise and use your power as a student.’ Just don’t speak to me about it. Please, I have had enough of you. I tell them that they’re all capable of anything, which is clearly untrue. I’m incapable of being interesting, for instance.

‘Working in the union means you are surrounded by people.’ That’s what that sentence originally said, before the boss made me get rid of the full stop and add ‘that are passionate about being part of that positive change.’ That’s the bloody problem with the glass windows, though, and all this transparency rubbish. You idiots, gawking at us like zoo exhibits while we hotbox (hotpot?) the shit out of the office. I ask the room to clap for the YUSU staff. Shockingly, they do.

‘Their anonymity often makes them an easy target for students.’ Another cracking joke by me — of course, their anonymity means they can’t be questioned properly by students, and if a student does try too hard, then HR steps in. The room doesn’t laugh, clearly too low an IQ in the room for my very witty remark. ‘Ultimately, this is a group of people that dedicate their lives to supporting and helping us’, I say. By ‘dedicate their lives’, I of course meant ‘dedicate around six “working”, if you can call it that, hours a day.’ A small amount of confused whooping breaks out.

I’m nearly at the end. ‘To the new team, give students what they deserve.’ What do students deserve? Well, a punch in the face. And then? Lamb hotpot. An image of a typewriter mysteriously appears behind me as I come to a post-modernist climax, thanking everyone and anyone. It’s done. Time to go home and have a hotpot.

— As told to Henry Dyer

Watch Urquhart’s ‘real’ speech on YSTV from 41:30 onwards: https://www.facebook.com/YorkStudentTelevision/videos/10156710988795934/