Summer is a time for fleeting joys. Be it friendships, romances or hilarious stories about charlatan academics at the University of Cambridge: these fragile bringers of summer happiness cannot be expected to last much longer than the lifecycle of the butterfly. So it is that the Jason Arday saga is grinding to a halt. It has brought much amusement but now, as those who made their belligerent knee-jerk defences of Arday retreat back to their Masters’ Lodgings and professorial chairs, he is left to face the end of things alone.
Well, almost alone. As Arday’s resignation and its aftermath made the Today programme this morning, the BBC had managed to find someone still willing to – at least on paper – defend The Nutty Professor. Unfortunately, Professor Kehinde Andrews was determined to make things about himself. Things started badly when he was introduced as working at Birmingham City University. ‘I’m actually no longer at Birmingham City University.’ He mentioned his recent redundancy multiple times at unrelated moments in the interview. Poor Professor Arday – his worst enemies have invariably been those who have sought to defend him.
Unfortunately, our very own Hiroo Onoda had come up against Justin Webb, one of the last old-school BBC bulldogs. Webb reacted with increasing incredulity to the attempted defence. Andrews claimed that all the serious allegations had been settled in Arday’s favour.
When Webb parried that actually making up that you had written a whole book constituted a bit of an issue, Andrews claimed people ‘don’t finish books all the time’, as if whatever piece of grifting nonsense Arday had fabricated was the sociological equivalent of Mozart’s Requiem or Bruckner’s 9th symphony.
Having reduced Webb to spluttering incredulity, Andrews tried another tack, claiming that Arday’s elaborate fantasy life was irrelevant because ‘he’s not in the public eye.’
Now a racist – which we are told is the only reason anyone would or could criticise Arday – might posit that a man who edited the Today programme, carried the Olympic torch and received multiple book deals is hardly a shrinking violet. Andrews’s narrative was that he had been a sort of scholarly near-recluse until the evil fascists of the Times Educational Supplement had come knocking. This, Andrews said, was evidence of a wider racist campaign against black academics. As Niemoller wrote, ‘first they came for the man who invented his marathon records’…
Andrews was also keen to claim that it wasn’t true that Professor Arday had been adopted as a sort of pet by the smug progressives who are making it their business to trash our ancient universities.
I don’t think Stephen Hawking erroneously claimed to have run 600 miles
Andrews tried to convince Webb that actually he had got there on his own merits but also – conversely – that everybody at Cambridge was overrated anyway. Under similar scrutiny, ‘many of his Cambridge colleagues would fall apart too’, he sneered. While it is undoubtedly true that dons are known for their eccentricities, I don’t think Stephen Hawking erroneously claimed to have run 600 miles, nor did Rowan Williams make up having raised 5 million quid. Mary Beard never pretended to have appeared in an episode of Get Your Own Back, or whatever the hell it was that Arday claimed. It’s becoming hard to keep track.
With a final reminder of the real story at play here – that he too was unemployed – Andrews disappeared from the airwaves and back to his grievances. I suspect with him goes the last of the Arday summer joy. Good night sweet prince, and reams of bullshit sing thee to thy rest!
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