LANCASTER university will surely be inundated with applications to join this year after an independent poll of 12,000 students voted it top for totty. Men and women in the university are top of the good looking league out of more than 100 universities according to an alternative league table compiled from more than 12,00 student responses and published on the internet. The university also came top for quality of teaching but came 16th overall after being let down by its architecture (95th) and accommodation (92nd).

But in the Citizen's own poll students dismissed their fellow undergraduates of the opposite sex as being downright ugly.

"Well I haven't seen any of these good looking blokes," laughed Heidi Le Cocq, 21 from Jersey. "The men are better looking at home than here. The only handsome one round here is my boyfriend."

And Jenni Cater, 20 agreed with that verdict: "It's absolutely false. You hear some nice northern accents which I like, but that's it. I suppose there's the odd one or two."

Art student friends Pru Royle and Amy Parker both reckoned student and native Lancaster lads were a dead loss compared to the boys back home down south. "They don't compare to the lads at home here. Luckily we both had boyfriends when we came," said Amy. One man waiting to graduate stood up for the male sex though. Steve Kime, 21, said that the girls were nothing to write home about. Said Steve: "Apart from my girlfriend who is absolutely gorgeous, there's not much to look at."

Yet there was one good looking student girl who thought the lads in Lancaster were worth going to university for. Christina Brown, 20, from Scotland went all misty eyed when she said: "Yes, the boys here are really good looking." And the student men of Lancaster consider themselves lucky they didn't choose the university down the road at Preston where girls came second from bottom in the looks stakes!

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.