University workers escalated their fight to wrestle fair pay from fat cat bosses yesterday by launching their first of three lightning strikes.

Thousands of members of academics' union UCU poured out of classrooms and onto picket lines on campuses across Britain at 11am.

Bosses were warned that the union's first two-hour walkout had won impressive support and motivated union members.

London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine rep Patrick Moules said the tactic kept their fight "alive and sustainable."

He told the Star: "Two-hour strikes are a new tactic, you never quite know how it's going to go, walking out in the middle of the day.

"But actually this the strongest picket line we've seen since this dispute began."

And University College London (UCL) rep Sean Wallis said short strikes pose a new problem for bosses "because they will be more frequent and happen at different times of day."

Over 200 UCL academics braved rain to stage a noisy lunchtime rally with students and members of Unison.

Carrying placards reading "The money is there - where's our share?" they marched through campus to the headquarters of the Universities and Colleges Employers Association.

The bosses' club is refusing to offer workers more than a 1 per cent pay rise despite vice-chancellors enjoying an average salary rise of 5 per cent.

The growing pay gap is a "grim mirror image of what's going on the private sector," UCU branch secretary Tony Brown told the rally.

UCL Students' Union officer Ben Towse said students know bosses not staff are to blame for raising fees and cutting their voice.

"We know that the issue here is whose university this is," Mr Towse said.

"They don't belong to vice-chancellors - they belong to us and we should run them."

At Southampton University, workers confronted hypocrite vice-chancellor Don Nutbeam about the £17,000 pay rise he pocketed before Christmas.

And thousands more took part in similar actions as part of a wave of two-hour strikes that continues on Tuesday.