Jason Arday

[FourSeasonSoupObsessive]

I am strongly starting to suspect that Giff is to Jason as Big Chocco is to Jack Monroe - one of the sources of the grandiosity and the tall tales.

 

[Tabitha D]

FFS - a daily commute from London to Glasgow?? Is he taking the piss?

It’s very hard work reading through this stuff isn’t it. Plod plod plod. It’s so turgid. And there’s no humour whatsoever - not even a bit.

 

[VeniVidiVicki]

It’s so bleeping boring I can’t read it. Although I do appreciate your efforts @Valiofthedolls

I’ve read all the screenshots and then just got to a point when I COULD NOT

He’s insufferable on paper. What on earth is he like IRL?

 

[drmortimer]

Been talking about 90s kids TV lately... he'd be PERFECT for a gunging on Get Your Own Back.

 

[Tabitha D]

In fact, he was commuting to all of these jobs from south London. Is that normal? I really don’t think it is.

Also, it’s so tedious that every time he goes somewhere, he has to tell us the exact tube stations he got on and off at. Why???

 

[FourSeasonSoupObsessive]

FFS - a daily commute from London to Glasgow?? Is he taking the piss?

It’s very hard work reading through this stuff isn’t it. Plod plod plod. It’s so turgid. And there’s no humour whatsoever - not even a bit.

It’s proper bleeping nuts. I mean WHY? He says it’s because his family needed him at home, but what bleeping good would he be to them when he’s up at three and not getting back until the late evening? What caring is he doing and when? If you do that commute (and I have ), you do it once a week and stay over a night or two. You don’t do it three times (thrice??) a week!

And the “I went to Savile Row for a shirt and came out with an ENTIRE SUIT, which was like all my dreams come true!”- duck me.

Sir, the clever chaps saw you coming and upsold you to buying a suit on credit. And given what a bleeping fraud you are, I’d be curious to know if you ever actually settled the bill.

This is making me rage. How can he tell such tall tales and simultaneously be so bleeping boring I want to peel my own skin off?

 

[cokeyoakey]

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.

I know there's been a lot of possibilities, but has anyone suggested

"the solipsistic fantasies of a profoundly incurious and egotistical man" as a thread title yet?

 

[Valiofthedolls]

Sterling work @Valiofthedolls. I think you need a hat all of your own.

lol I’ve already got one. Or more than one, if we’re going by Ol’ Giff’s degree counts. I didn’t have to pretend to be in a coma at my PhD viva either.

Ah, those jolly halcyon recollections of happy days sat in the lecture theatres of yesteryore, where all the mature student mothers (like extremely learned Giff to whom education was extremely important) would bring along their cheery sixteen year-old children and a lovely ol’ Enid Blytonesque midnight feast with lashings of ginger beer picnic.

 

[Tabitha D]

It’s proper bleeping nuts. I mean WHY? He says it’s because his family needed him at home, but what bleeping good would he be to them when he’s up at three and not getting back until the late evening? What caring is he doing and when? If you do that commute (and I have ), you do it once a week and stay over a night or two. You don’t do it three times (thrice??) a week!

It’s no wonder that (according to his students) he was only turning up to one hour of a four hour seminar.
Plus what about all the networking etc. you have to do as a professor - the stuff that requires you to make an appearance at college events after hours and schmooze sponsors / donors etc.

 

[drmortimer]

In fact, he was commuting to all of these jobs from south London. Is that normal? I really don’t think it is.

Also, it’s so tedious that every time he goes somewhere, he has to tell us the exact tube stations he got on and off at. Why???

Y'know when kids lie... then add in all these false spurious details to try and flesh out the story as if it's real?

That.

100% bleeping bull.

 

[Valiofthedolls]

Giff is definitely a mumsnetter tho.

Love that ol’ Jase has to confirm for us that it’s true too. He was 18. He’d turned 18 in May.

 

[Tabitha D]

lol I’ve already got one. Or more than one, if we’re going by Ol’ Giff’s degree counts. I didn’t have to pretend to be in a coma at my PhD viva either.
View attachment 4088232
Ah, those jolly halcyon recollections of happy days sat in the lecture theatres of yesteryore, where all the mature student mothers (like extremely learned Giff to whom education was extremely important) would bring along their cheery sixteen year-old children and a lovely ol’ Enid Blytonesque midnight feast with lashings of ginger beer picnic.
View attachment 4088262View attachment 4088258

I thought this paragon of a woman had FIVE degrees?
So much bull.

 

[cokeyoakey]

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.

Yes, I agree - he's falsely raising people's hopes, and potentially making others who have autism and learning disability feel bad about themselves for not reaching the heights that he has.

And even though he's written the book to back up his own story, nothing he's described suggests autism does it? And I don't know anyone with a learning disability who'd be able to manage their life sufficiently at 16 to be able to leave school each day and make money from pool sharking/snooker. Sounds likely that he might have dyslexia, but that's not such a good story is it - there are many excellent academics with dyslexia.

I wonder if he was diagnosed at the same place as Dr Dr Jack Monroe got her wandering autism diagnosis?

 

[Multi-21]

It’s proper bleeping nuts. I mean WHY? He says it’s because his family needed him at home, but what bleeping good would he be to them when he’s up at three and not getting back until the late evening? What caring is he doing and when? If you do that commute (and I have ), you do it once a week and stay over a night or two. You don’t do it three times (thrice??) a week!

This is a man who also says he doesn’t sleep at night or eat in the daytime remember. He is not bound by normal time constraints like us mere mortals

 

[Tabitha D]

This is a man who also says he doesn’t sleep at night or eat in the daytime remember. He is not bound by normal time constraints like us mere mortals

Yep, he told us he doesn’t eat during the day only a page after telling us he had lunch with someone.

That’s what happens if you tell too many lies - you can’t remember what you’ve lied about and it all falls apart.

 

[cokeyoakey]

Giff is definitely a mumsnetter tho. View attachment 4088316Love that ol’ Jase has to confirm for us that it’s true too. He was 18. He’d turned 18 in May.

WHY (oh why oh why) do we have a whole long paragraph about how umbrellas work? I mean, I know he has a word count to reach, but FFS.

What is all this nonsense?

 

[Tabitha D]

Giff is definitely a mumsnetter tho. View attachment 4088316Love that ol’ Jase has to confirm for us that it’s true too. He was 18. He’d turned 18 in May.

A whole paragraph on that ABSOLUTE CORKER () of a story about umbrellas. WTF. Did no one at the publisher read this?

 

[TrashleenMoron]

Did his claim about the stroke/coma erasing his memory pre-date the announcement of his book? It kind of feels like the book was partially written to reinforce the lies he told to prop up his lousy academic record.

 

[drmortimer]

I’d bet my house on that particular August in 2003 being a record level of drought in Clapham tbh.

 

[cokeyoakey]

I'm from Liverpool myself and I can't tell you how pissed off his description of us as though we're uneducated idiots who've never seen a non white person before makes me.

I know, right - in Liverpool. LIVERPOOL!

Which has oldest Black community in Britain, dating back to the 1730s (according to Wikipedia - off to report myself for plagiarism).

But yes, he was SPECIAL! And everyone would see it one day . . .