Talk:May Ball in Cambridge

Old discussions
A "May ball" is an end of term event at nearly every educational institute across the UK, if not globally. Nearly every university, sixth form college and, increasingly, high schools. There seems to be no reason why the term "may ball" should be synonymous with Cambridge. Unless someone can give a reason for this, I suggest that this article be made generic for the purpose.

- Yes; most Oxford balls are described as a "May Ball" (e.g. there are three on the 9th May this year - I think Brasenose, Keble and St. Hilda's). Only a few happen in 9th week, and only some of those count as Commemoration Balls. The page should at least be expanded to include Oxford, since most of the statements on the page are equally applicable. 86.172.249.180 (talk) 13:22, 9 April 2009 (UTC)

I fail to see why if there is a section on an oxfor equivelant there shouldn't be one on a St Andrews may ball. It is essentially the same thing, A Ball held at the end of the academic year.

Nobody cares about st. andrews; is it a uni?

Can we get lineups etc as they develope. On the kaiser chiefs wiki page, apaz they played a ball last year! impressive foresight.

Why does Trinity May Ball have its own special section when there are already links to further information below? While it can't hurt to have extra information around, it seems a little odd to mention one ball specifically. More work should probably be done on building up information on other balls but until then, maybe we should scratch that section entirely. If people feel a need to look up Trinity May Ball perhaps that section should be converted into a little stublet of its own. Would be cute, and perhaps satisfy the insecurity issue that seems to be floating around. --131.111.8.102 13:26, 31 May 2006 (UTC)

The article in question is about May Balls in general - reference is made to Trinity's Ball in the article and I don't see how it is appropriate. I can quickly see this turning into a "My May Ball is better than yours contest",I guess the guys @ John's will be livid.

Other musicians that have played - mystery jets at sidney sussex, rakes at trinity, dirty pretty things too i think. all last year

The solution to the Trinity problem is more information about other balls, not less about Trinity's. FYI, if anyone wants to put lineups on, in 2006 Trinity had the Guillemots and Trinity Hall had The Automatic. Echobeats 00:22, 8 February 2007 (UTC)

Why is the Kings Affair listed? It's a June Event. (PS. Come to the Trinity Hall June event this year!)
 * Removed. Thanks for your little ad, David. &#8212; Richie 00:25, 21 February 2007 (UTC)

In accordance with the suggestions on this page, I've added some more info on the Robinson Ball, but this has been consistently removed, called an advert. Obviously this page cannot turn into a Ball sales page, but there is scope to give information about the various balls and what makes them each distinctive. Suggestions?
 * Do you have any sources for the 'reputation' of Robinson's Ball? If not, I think that sentence ought to be removed, as it is clear promotion for that Ball. Also, if there is a statement about the cheapest May Ball, should there not also be one about the most expensive Ball? Churchillarian 12:25, 25 February 2007 (UTC)

The ball of Gonville and Caius, although only held biennially, continually lives up to its elegant reputation.

Removed - too blatant advert and completely uncitable —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.111.219.218 (talk) 03:48, 5 February 2008 (UTC)

I doubt Police Officers are employed by Balls any more; Trinity stopped around 1995 as the cost of an officer being employed for an entire night makes them an inefficient option these days. Dan

Dan is correct. Also the dubious comment about being fired as a cannonball is almost certainly unture, and even if it is makes no grammatical sense. I'll remove it unless someone cites a source. DDD


 * Ah, but, St John's must employ police because of the *size* of the event - it's a legal requirement. MikeMorley 08:17, 12 May 2007 (UTC)

St John's employed Police Officer(s) in 2005 & 2006. This is a fact. If I remember, 1 in 2005 and we uped this to 2 in 2006 to keep up with increasing crash attempts. Without prejudicing the 2007 Ball, I would be VERY surprised if no Police Officers were present. The Ball pays for their time. I've removed the "dubious tag" as it is simply the truth.

There is no legal requirement for Balls to hire police officers despite their size however Cambridgeshire Police says they are able to do so providing they pay for their time. tsse 06 Nov 2007

I was joint president of the 1999 Trinity May Ball. We paid for a police officer to be present. Gendal 16:30, 19 May 2007 (UTC)

What's all that about 'razor wire' in bushes? Surely this is illegal as well as rubbish? It's a May Ball, not Guantanamo Bay...

It certainly used to be true that razor wire was placed in bushes however that was stopped a number of years ago due to health and saftey legislation tsse 06 Nov 2007

27 January 2009 Removed redundant info on Trinity College Dublin - all May Balls are black tie, it's nothing novel; same for live music. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 128.232.250.114 (talk) 11:08, 27 January 2009 (UTC)

I booked tickets for Pembroke Ball yesterday - I booked mine at 8.57, so if you're getting the 7 minutes figure from 9.07 it's inaccurate as they definitely released them before the stated 9.00. 31/01/09

Congratulations you must have got one of the very first ones! The tickets were released at 8:57 and had sold out probably within 4/5 mins but as we weren't expecting it to be quite that fast it took us about 90sec to change the website over... I put the 9:07 figure for ease - if anyone's that interested in evidence I can forward you emails but they're not published anywhere..... Bredon (talk) 14:42, 4 February 2009 (UTC)

To say tribute bands are not notable is untrue (A*Teens, 1964 the Tribute, The Iron Maidens) and not a good enough reason to dismiss the inclusion of the Antarctic Monkeys in Pem 09 ball list. If you had gone to the ball, they were by far the most popular act and outstripped Metronomy and so, IMO, deserve to be on the list if Pem 09 is going to be there at all. Also, you cannot consistently be against tribute bands as notable but at the same time allow the DJ sets of bands to be included! That's equally as fake as a tribute band! Unless you can find me some Wikipedia protocol that confirms your assertion that tribute bands cannot give "notable performances" I will not accept it. Equally, the inclusion gives a more well-rounded sense of the ball in question and is in no way a detriment to the article. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.111.184.4 (talk) 19:09, 3 June 2010 (UTC)

Ticket Demand
Can anyone find verifiable, non-primary sources for anything in this section? If not, it will have to go. - Pointillist (talk) 22:41, 6 February 2009 (UTC)
 * There are no non-primary sources. The webmasters have been adding the information themselves I think. I am pretty confident that the figures there are right currently, but the section ought to go I suppose. It is not even very interesting. Fi1Kaiv8 (talk) 00:22, 7 February 2009 (UTC)
 * That's what I suspected. There might be something interesting to say about the rate of ticket sales, but there's not enough context and anyway it would have to be verifiable. This is a long shot, but as this is about Internet response rates bear in mind that Ashley Friedlein (CEO of e-consultancy.com) was at Pembroke (1991-95) and might be able to advise, if any of the webmasters could attract his interest.... - Pointillist (talk) 11:30, 7 February 2009 (UTC)

Performances list
Though, especially in the runup to mayweek 2010 there may be considerable internal interest in this, wikipedia is not a news blog or a crystal ball. I very much doubt that the inclusion of the long list of "prior performances" can be justified, but i am willing to leave it up for a few days and see if reliable sources indicating notability and verifiability are found. If they are not, then I will remove the full section again.Ajbpearce (talk) 22:23, 10 June 2010 (UTC)


 * The Tab has an article listing some of the confirmed acts for 2010, but they probably won't cover every college. The MyPidge page in the external links sources the acts for 2009, and this Varsity article discusses some of the 2007 acts. As a side note, can anyone find a better source for Time magazine calling St John's May Ball the "seventh best party in the world"? I've heard it by word of mouth several times, yet I can't find any related lists in the Time archives. Every article simply quotes it as assumed fact, including the referenced Varsity article. --Blaah Blaah (talk) 23:53, 10 June 2010 (UTC)


 * The 'seventh best party in the world' reference in Varsity took this article as its source, and Time magazine have confirmed that they have never made such a claim - Time Magazine Search for "May Ball". 131.111.128.232 (talk) 20:55, 6 March 2011 (UTC)

King's - Stranglers
Although the reference for the Stranglers at King's comes from the college itself, it actually happened in the early 1980s rather than the 1970s. --Rumping (talk) 09:03, 24 February 2015 (UTC)

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List of performances
I have removed the ludicrously long list of performances from the article. It adds little if anything of value, is potentially enormously long - do we list every performer at every May Ball? If not how do we choose? DuncanHill (talk) 02:37, 12 February 2018 (UTC)

Glastonbury’s article also has a “ludicrously long” list of performances, plus there’s an entire separate article dedicated to listing every single performer.

So do we remove that too?

I can understand getting rid of some of the relatively unnotable acts, but we should leave the big ones - for example, having Bowie, Fleetwood Mac, The Who, Deep Purple, etc. back in the 70s is pretty significant. Jaredjeya (talk) 17:47, 3 June 2018 (UTC)