Tried and trusted - if sometimes extremely unlikely - excuses such as "the cat ate my homework", could soon become a thing of the past with Oxford University's creation of an "agony professor".

The fictional professor will be the helpful face of a new internet site, set up to answer educational queries from puzzled schoolchildren across the country.

The virtual don, dubbed Professor Hodgkin by the site's creators, will be available from September for questions from both state and independent school children. Hiding behind the professor's mortar board and gown will be a team of renowned scholars, including nine Fellows of the Royal Society. The real professors will be putting their minds to work on primary school questions like "How far is the sun from the earth?"

The website - Ask Professor Hodgkin - is being created by the University's chemistry department and is named after its most famous former member.

Prof Dorothy Hodgkin, who died in 1994, aged 84, was a chemist and the only British woman to win a Nobel Prize for science.

The University is hoping the site will help banish its image of snobbishness, highlighted in recent comments by Chancellor Gordon Brown, who said access to Oxford was still bound to the tradition of the 'old school tie'.