Jason Arday

[FourSeasonSoupObsessive]

Good god. I’ve ploughed through those screenshots this morning (thank you for your service @Valiofthedolls ) and I’m speechless.

I knew it would be bad but it’s orders of magnitude worse than I ever could have imagined 🫪

These are the solipsistic fantasies of a profoundly incurious and egotistical man. This isn’t a biography, it’s the wish fulfillment diary of an isolated and unhappy 14 year old projecting dreams of success onto their future self.

I‘m blown away by how interchangeable the back stories of all of our favourite Internet fantasists and grifters are. The stories of “needless to say, I had the last laugh” where the plucky hero defies the expectations of the naysayers and rises to triumph could have been written by this guy, or Jack Monroe, or Jess Taylor. They’re all the same. They are all pure Alan Partridge. Everyone around them is reduced to a two dimensional supporting character who either supports or thwarts the hero. They always knew they were destined for greatness.

Events that most people would regard as very normal (liking music, discovering a hobby) are elevated to the momentous and used as evidence of just how special the narrator is. Conversations are remember verbatim and regurgitated to bolster the extraordinary claims - I don’t think they realise that most people have these kinds of conversations about events in their lives, but they have them by themselves in the shower. Then after you’ve finished verbally besting your enemies, you get out of the shower and get on with life. You don’t publish these imaginary victories

I cannot get enough of the stories of these people with the yawning chasm inside them that drives them to this grandiose but desperate need for adulation. It’s fascinating.

 

[Mugginsme]

The whole book is classic Did ye? Aye.

Anyone editing this must have been told it was fiction. I refuse to believe otherwise.

Jason Arday is a massive twunt.

 

[Old Harold]

Unsurprising. We have many grifters like him in Ireland, like the Nigerian woman who arrived here in her 30s and was handed an entire Black Studies department in UCD. She does corporate and NGO events and lectures Irish people on how racist we are while relentlessly attacking everything about Irish culture and people. As with Arday, it's disgraceful that she was ever given any sort of publicly funded platform when she's so destructive and stupid.

 

[FourSeasonSoupObsessive]

I also have questions about why this high flyer who was making bank on the lecture circuit and in multiple higher education institutes round the country was apparently at the time living back with his Mum in SE London. Hmmm.

 

[emmer_moans]

I also have questions about why this high flyer who was making bank on the lecture circuit and in multiple higher education institutes round the country was apparently at the time living back with his Mum in SE London. Hmmm.

Also he seems to be skilled at networking and selling himself for all these jobs/partnerships etc yet was supposedly non verbal until 11... I just don't buy it.

 

[Multi-21]

His mum and school didn’t realise he was leaving at lunchtime to go and play snooker for 6 hours a day? No wonder he wasn’t learning how to read or write if he wasn’t attending but the fact no one flagged at any point him slipping out the door at lunchtime is another fantasy

 

[Elis]

And yet everybody fell for his lies and truly believed his extraordinary achievements

 

[Old Harold]

I don't believe he has autism or any kind of developmental delay. I think his mother is a fantasist who has pushed and enabled him to exploit weaknesses in an ideologically captured education sector, and he was there at the right time to do that. I think both he and she have some kind of personality disorder.

 

[Gooner11]

View attachment 4086601Oh no you effing didn’t!

Spoiler

View attachment 4086605View attachment 4086603

This is the most pointless lie. Southfields had one Victorian building that was three stories high and was surrounded by several low level 60's style blocks.
Has he said anything like he was one of only a few black pupils or anything like that? Because that would be an absolute whopper of epic proportions

 

[FrumpyCat]

Lots of autobiographies by grifters are

Also, Giff arranged for her boys to help out in a soup kitchen located in a low-budget Christmas movie. After being fortified by the delicious, nutritious soup, everyone spontaneously burst into an immaculately harmonised rendition of “In The Bleak Midwinter” and exchanged carefully selected items from their meagre belongings as gifts. Then the grumpy local billionaire realised he’d spent his life prioritising profit over humanity, and he donated one of his spare mansions to be used as a charmingly quaint hostel for down-on-their-luck folk.
Flash-forward to the next year and homeless academic dude has been running evening classes for his hostel brethren, and they’re all now world-renowned professors, in between tending their chickens and doing good deeds in the local neighbourhood. As the film closes, the camera lingers on a huge framed photo of Jason in the entrance hall, as an echo-ey voiceover of the midwife telling Giff her son would do great things with his long fingers plays, and then the scene fades into the closing credits.

What surprises me is that there were so many homeless people who were prepared to queue for a label of soup and a hunk of bread on Christmas day. Just about every church and community group for miles around would be offering a Christmas dinner. And usually services like haircuts and healthcare and showers.

I think it's given that most autobiographies are 'enhanced' with made up conversations to make them more readable, but at least try for a bit of plausibility.

And the £1.4 million for a book deal of a pretend academic that virtually no one has heard of? Ha ha, no. It's like that time Jack Monroe was offered a six figure sum for her life story but turned it down for 'reasons'.

 

[FrumpyCat]

I don't believe he has autism or any kind of developmental delay. I think his mother is a fantasist who has pushed and enabled him to exploit weaknesses in an ideologically captured education sector, and he was there at the right time to do that. I think both he and she have some kind of personality disorder.

You would certainly think so by the way he/Eve writes about his mother.

I think he might have dyslexia to some degree as some of the stuff about that seems accurate.

 

[SunsetSmile]

@FourSeasonSoupObsessive
"I cannot get enough of the stories of these people with the yawning chasm inside them that drives them to this grandiose but desperate need for adulation. It’s fascinating."

My tech skills aren't as good as most of you. I wanted to snapshot FSSO point but could only clipboard it & plagiarism panicked

Absolutely agree, I'm fascinated! But no way am I going to line the coffers of grifting narcs or pollute my bookcase. It's much more enjoyable reading the most risible highlights on here. If those taking one for the team and submerging themselves in the swill need counselling I could do a Go Fund Me.

 

[drmortimer]

This whole saga is some sort of fever dream. Absolutely fascinating, baffling and infuriating in equal measure.

 

[SunsetSmile]

I don't believe he has autism or any kind of developmental delay. I think his mother is a fantasist who has pushed and enabled him to exploit weaknesses in an ideologically captured education sector, and he was there at the right time to do that. I think both he and she have some kind of personality disorder.

I'm unconvinced that his problems were of the severity he portrays but I would suspect there was some issue & obviously having a forceful MH nurse mum would aid help seeking.

But this book could turn the spotlight on the family. What financial benefits came from these diagnostic labels? His mum was registered as a social worker until a few years ago but also described as a MH nurse. Were her multiple (5 claimed) degrees funded by public bodies. If so, why? In a world where people have been in debt for HE for over 20 years how can anyone get 5 degrees? Have other family members achieved status/position that a meritocratic comparison of presenting qualifications against other candidates would seem to make questionable.

 

[PaddyDomino]

Thank you to the poster for the screenshots!
It reads like a children's book, and Giff reads like a fictional character to me, like a wise owl cheerleader.
Even her name, it reminds me of Moth in that Salt Path scandal, in that he's a real person but that's not his name and he wasn't like as he was portrayed.
I know it's short for Gifty but it just doesn't ring true to me.
So many mad things in that book, who calls their armchair a "mothership"?!
"Walking and talking chicken wings"?!
"Wot's a PhD, duh"?!
That lecturer that told him "you, the likes of you will never get a PhD!", she would want to sue him for libel!

 

[ButtonDownTheHutches]

Also he seems to be skilled at networking and selling himself for all these jobs/partnerships etc yet was supposedly non verbal until 11... I just don't buy it.

He did seem to go from being non-verbal to instantaneously extreme eloquent, articulate and well-spoken.

 

[emm]

Forgot to add, he also now has SEVERE epilepsy (diagnosed in chapter 19) due to being SEVERELY beaten by the four youths at the bus stop (in chapter 17) despite his polite questioning of their intentions, View attachment 4086758and who he later (in chapter 19) selflessly requested the CPS not give custodial sentences.

Now in chapter 21 he also has dyslexia significant underlying difficulties of the type associated with individuals who are described as dyslexic. Handily disgnosed by a fella with perfect recollection of 15+ years before and yet more inspirational words for our young barely literate hero.

Spoiler

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His mum and school didn’t realise he was leaving at lunchtime to go and play snooker for 6 hours a day? No wonder he wasn’t learning how to read or write if he wasn’t attending but the fact no one flagged at any point him slipping out the door at lunchtime is another fantasy

I'm reading these extracts at work while my students do a test and I'm having to hold back laughter at how absurd it all is. Every time I think it can't get more ridiculous I'm proved wrong

 

[GabbyJ]

I was first made aware of him by one of my customers a couple of years ago. He was so excited to tell me about Jason Ardays achievements, he had listened to him on the radio and told me not to give up hope on my autistic nonverbal (now 6 year old) son. I was immediately intrigued and when I googled him there really wasn’t much information on his back story online. His autism diagnosis only briefly mentioned. There was only a very small part of me that clung onto the hope that my son could achieve what this man did but overall I found the leap from not talking till he was 11 and unable to read and write till 18 to professor at Cambridge to be incredulous.
What he has done is damaging. It raises unrealistic hope and expectations in parents of non verbal children. It’s cruel. I do not have an ounce of sympathy for any of the backlash he is getting.

It’s absolutely shocking that Cambridge of all places didn’t do a thorough background check on him. I would assume that an elite institution like Cambridge would have research on neurodivergence and somebody would have picked holes in his story about being non verbal.
From what has been made public about him this man should never have been in a teaching/lecturing position as professor or teacher ANYWHERE let alone Cambridge.

I’m a huge believer in meritocracy and absolutely loathe the idea of positions being filled to look representative and inclusive. In my workplace colleagues would often state in meetings that we need ‘more female managers’ and my argument was always no we need more competent and able managers. The world appears to be going to pot.

 

[emmer_moans]

I wonder if he really resigned or was told to resign.

 

[cokeyoakey]

Ok so this I know - in your Japanese/Asian/Lucky Voice type karaoke booth, you are left to select your song.

In a bar/western type karaoke with a room of strangers putting their name down for a turn (and most notably, in the UK, strangers consuming alcohol) there’s an MC controlling the list, mics, remote and the DVDs..

And however good you are, people would be pissed off if you did FIVE songs in a row!