Milly Ayers is going to Oxford University. Picture The Sunday Times A fairground worker will be the third student from a traveller family to be offered a place at Oxford University. Milly Ayers, 18, who is related to the founder of Billy Smart’s circus, was brought up in a caravan then a mobile home. Aged three, she used to collect players' £1 coins on a fairground. She left school at 13 and did her GCSEs on her own, scoring average grades. She has wanted to study at Oxford, which seemed “like a mythical place”, since her father gave her a jumper that said “I love Oxford University” when she was a child.