Gibb’s building viewed across the Backs in the morning mist; leisurely picnics with prosecco, strawberries, and tweed-clad youngsters in college gardens; windy alleys with vintage bikes shot through sepia filters. This is very much not the Cambridge of sticky clubs, sleepless nights in libraries, and supervisions held in underground rooms that have never seen oak-panelling in their lives: it is the romanticised Cambridge of Chariots of Fire; the bastillion of intelligence in The Man Who Knew Infinity and The Theory of Everything; and even the ironic Cambridge of Porterhouse Blue. Welcome to the alternative reality that is Cambridge pop culture style.

As anyone actually going to Cambridge – and not too engulfed in a fiction bubble – will soon realise, this Cambridge is a prime example of a fictional construct, a conventionalised scheme used throughout film and literature; it is the sort of concept that punters like to present to tourists on their somewhat fancified tours. Of course, the reason why this Cambridge is used as a backdrop so often, rather than the more realistic energy drink- and essay-fuelled one, is simple enough: it goes with the nature of fiction for stories to be set in captivating locations. A sepia-tinted, nostalgic version of an all-male, white world offers more in that sense. How would viewers feel about Harold and Eric in Chariots of Fire hitting 'Dangerspoons' after their first race against each other, like their modern day athletic counterparts do, post-Varsity? No, I didn’t think that would go down well.

As long as fiction is distinguished from reality, there is nothing to be discussed: let authors and scriptwriters create scenes of oak-panelled beauty, embracing upper-class, white privilege for audiences to indulge in. Yet issues arise when this becomes intertwined with the public image of Cambridge, as not only an academically, but also socially, elite institution – think of young Srinivasa Ramanujan struggling to fit in the pre-WWI Trinity in The Man Who Knew Infinity. The likes of the Daily Mail gorge precisely on this image of Cambridge, derived from pop culture depictions. True, May Balls are decadent, and some drinking society antics straightforwardly oppressive in the patriarchal sense (the rape jokes made by members of St John’s drinking society this spring, for example), and there is no reason not to report this. However when these stories, very much unrepresentative of the University as a whole, are laced with the fictional image of Cambridge as a default image for much of the public, reality becomes distorted and the stereotype perpetuated. Access schemes, an eclectic student body, and the strive for equality just do not fit into pop culture Cambridge, and therefore also not into the images of the university as an elite and exclusive institution, that are formed based upon that.

But despite all the contortions of reality, Cambridge fiction should not come equipped with trigger warnings for stereotyped university depictions. Anyone who has enough initiative to think at all independently, or possesses any level of critical thinking can easily catch on to the fact that what we are shown in these works is most likely not an accurate representation of the modern university. The same goes for any work of fiction: fans of Grey’s Anatomy cannot – sadly – expect all real-life doctors to be McDreamys, nor life in a chemistry lab to automatically involve producing batches of crystal meth à la Breaking Bad. Yes, Cambridge is faced with additional access and image challenges because of the widespread stereotypes, and pop culture serves to perpetuate these to a large extent; but the underlying processes are nothing new under the fiction-versus-reality sky.

And in all fairness, the fiction-reality dichotomy is not just about hampering access efforts. How many current students can say, hand on heart, that they did not have Brideshead Revisited-esque fantasies of riverside picnics when filling in that UCAS application? Who hasn’t wondered if their college’s head porter is anything like Skullion in Porterhouse Blue? Who hasn’t dreamed of Footlights fame based on Stephen Fry’s descriptions of his Cambridge days? Who hasn’t wanted to be in that scene from The Theory of Everything at John’s May Ball? Cambridge is what people make of it, in pop art and in reality.