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A Kingston lecturer is dressing as David Bowie for a year

Kate Lloyd
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Kate Lloyd
Contributing writer
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What's the coolest thing your university lecturers ever did? Actually don't tell me. Whatever it is, it won't be as cool as Will Brooker from Kingston University, who's living as David Bowie every day for a year.

Will teaches film and cultural studies at the university and is spending time 'inhabiting Bowie's headspace' to research a specialist paper he's writing called Forever Stardust.

Will told the Guardian: 'The idea is to inhabit Bowie’s head space at points in his life and career to understand his work from an original angle, while retaining a critical and objective perspective at the same time – a kind of split persona perhaps.'

The academic has already channelled the musician's Ziggy Stardust, Aladdin Sane and Thin White Duke phases, and has dressed, eaten and read like Bowie. To simulate the TWD period, he lit black candles in his room, painted expressionist pictures and listened to German music. He's also forced himself to go through sleep deprived weekends consuming only red peppers and milk.

There have been some difficulties though: 'The levels of cocaine Bowie was consuming is not just illegal for a professor like myself, but it’s much too expensive – as well as unhealthy. So at the weekend I had a six-pack of energy drinks to try and simulate the experience of illegal substances.' 

Outfit-wise, Will's created Bowie's unique outfits by pulling together pieces from online marketplaces and going to a tailor. 

He says: 'It’s fortunate that I’m going through his career chronologically. Because I think by ’83 he was pretty clean. I think I’ll get a tan, get fit, get my hair changed again, get my teeth whitened.' 

In other weird news, you can now have your fortune told through food.

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