Porterhouse Blue  Porterhouse Blue is a novel written by Tom Sharpe, first published in 1974. A satirical look at Cambridge life and the struggle between tradition and reform, "Porterhouse Blue" tells the story of Skullion, the Head Porter of Porterhouse, a fictional college of Cambridge University. The novel has a sequel, "Grantchester Grind". In 1987, Channel 4 adapted "Porterhouse Blue" into a TV series of the same name. The central characters are Skullion, the Head Porter; Zipser, a research graduate student; Sir Godber Evans, the Master; Lady Mary, the Master's wife; the Dean; and Mrs. Biggs, Zipser's bedder. For the first time in five hundred years, the master of Porterhouse fails to name his successor on his deathbed before dying. He succumbs to a "Porterhouse Blue" - a stroke brought about by overindulgence in the college's legendary cuisine. Sir Godber Evans is appointed as his successor. Sir Godber, egged on by his zealous wife, Lady Mary, announces sweeping changes to the centuries of college tradition, much to the concern of Skullion and the Fellows, who plan a counter-attack on the proposed contraceptive machines, women students, and canteen. Meanwhile, the only research graduate student in the college, Zipser, visits the hard-of-hearing Chaplain and explains his fixation for Mrs Biggs, his middle-aged, large-breasted bedder, through a megaphone, and is therefore overheard by the whole college. Mrs Biggs is not within earshot, but nevertheless senses that something is up from Zipser's awkward behaviour around her every time she comes to clean his room and especially when she teases him sexually, the climax of which is when she asks him to help her take off her bright red PVC raincoat from behind, in the tight confines of the "gyp". While Sir Godber congratulates himself on having defeated the traditionalists, investigative journalist Cornelius Carrington is brought in on the pretext of helping both parties, while secretly having his own agenda. Meanwhile, having been advised to pick up a foreign student, so as to avoid his lust for Mrs Biggs, Zipser after a series of frustrating attempts to buy condoms, accidentally acquires two large boxes. Concerned that he has technically stolen them, he tries many ways to get rid of them and eventually inflates them with gas from the gas fire in his room and floats them up the chimney, not realising that some get stuck in the chimney and the rest float down into the college court.