Distant relative phoned during off-campus university function (5-4)
I believe the answer is:
orang-utan
'distant relative' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both animals as well as being singular nouns.
Maybe there's a link between them I don't understand?
'phoned during off-campus university function' is the wordplay.
'phoned' becomes 'rang' ('ring' can be a synonym of 'phone').
'during' means one lot of letters goes inside another.
'off campus university' becomes 'ou' (I can't explain this - if you can you should give a lot more credence to this answer).
'function' becomes 'tan' (tangent, mathematical function).
'rang' inserted within 'ou' is 'orangu'.
'orangu'+'tan'='ORANG-UTAN'
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for orang-utan that I've seen before include "11 across" , "Endangered primate" , "Ape of Borneo and Sumatra" , "Anthropoid mammal of Indonesia" , "Great ape" .)