Jason Arday

[Carefree]

The childhood stuff rings so untrue, I can't believe any of it. When you've suffered trauma like he claims in this book, in my experience and other peoples as well, you tend to block it out mentally and not remember much of it, at least on the surface, For him to remember everything in such crisp detail is just bullshit.

Can confirm. Born in '83, absolutely no memories from '88 until 1997, scant memories from '97 until now and not in a just can't remember what dinner was last night. Tremendous amounts of abuse and neglect as a child but maybe that's the difference? I was getting beatings, not support, for my daring to exist

 

[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'.

 

[Tabitha D]

Invite ghostwriter Eve too, and you can have an elevated experience (featu featuring dancing! )View attachment 4088428

He doesn’t like talking about himself you know - he’s so private.
FFS. Pull the other one!

 

[Winners_Song]

Jason was a keynote speaker at a conference I attended last year. He was very much treated like a celebrity and I remember thinking that it must be overwhelming to receive so much attention. When he came off stage, there was a huge crowd of delegates wanting a piece of him (mostly women). I can imagine that really went to his head, because he was living as a rock star.

The title of his keynote was “I am the King of Wishful Thinking”. Yes, really.

 

[Tabitha D]

An extract from the student’s article:

 

[IcanSpellBéchamel]

I'm cringing so hard at these extracts that I'm wearing my liver as a hat.

Terrible, terrible writing. Unreadable shite. I can't believe that Simon & Schuster published this load of wank.

 

[Valiofthedolls]

Well gawd bless the ol’ it’s here and am going in. Will regale you all with abundant screenshots!

ETA: Fittingly, it’s not got much heft to it. Feels like the lightest-weight hardback I’ve ever picked up- like it’s one of those pretend books that used to be on the shelves of Spoons Deansgate.

 

[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.

 

[Harlot O'Scara]

Arday referred to being good at cutting /making clothes himself - his mother helped & encouraged him. This was in the Bath interview. Said he could be/thought of being a tailor & referenced Ozwald Boateng

He's starting to sound like Jay from The Inbetweeners

 

[Wu Tien]

Someone made a good point but can’t remember where I saw it. Jason says he was diagnosed with what was then called Asperger’s syndrome at the age of three in 1988 but it wasn’t a diagnosis that was available to clinicians as the term wasn’t used until 1994?

One of the big differences between High Functioning Autism (HFA) and Asperger's is that with the former there is no language acquisition delay. Another big difference is that those who are diagnosed with HFA often have low to average intelligence while those with the latter have average to high intelligence. (The two terms were folded into a wider diagnosis of autism in the DSM V which is why they are no longer used in diagnoses.)

And it's pretty well accepted that if a non-verbal child does not speak by the age of eight, it is medically improbable that they ever will speak.

(Sorry to be prickly about this but I have autism, was diagnosed with Asperger's at the Autism Research Centre at Cambridge University and get tired of the term HFA being used to describe anyone on the spectrum who functions reasonably well.)

 

[whatisityoucan'tface]

I've been following this for a few weeks, but the 'speech therapy three hours a day, seven days a week' was so Jack-a-like I had to head straight over. She could never resist bending space and time to accommodate her fantastic claims.

Also is is just me or does me have a 'dupers delight' smirk in every photo ...

 

[ButtonDownTheHutches]

Spoiler: A load of old wank: random selection

“When I was very young, my dad Joseph worked as the head chef of a cafeteria in a supermarket and later in the same role at a manufacturing company…After James Brown, he was certainly the hardest-working man in show business- or at least the catering industry.” View attachment 4086431His older brother was diagnosed with ‘differently presenting’ autism a year before he was (his brother loved playing with Lego, he didn’t like playing with Lego).

His younger brother was “a bit of a prodigy, able to read and write fluently from the age of four”

When he was ‘about five’ it was discovered he was ‘profoundly deaf in his left ear’.

In his school (which he started at age four) because of his constant rocking, humming and banging his head against the wall in the corner, (including a time he did it and split his head open), he was subsequently put into a classroom on his own with a single teacher to teach him. A few chapters later we learn this was in a special needs primary school; at the insistence of his mother he went into ‘mainstream primary school’ from the age of seven.

He started smearing his shit all over the walls at home because he was ‘fascinated by the texture of things that were squishy’. Giff solved this problem by giving him a tube of toothpaste to play with.

Fucking hell, it’s so Jack Monroe coded it’s not even funny. They’re NOT LIKE THE OTHER POVS, okaaay?! They’re MIDDLE CLASS.
View attachment 4086458 View attachment 4086468View attachment 4086470There is genuinely not a single thing too mundane (and too completely invented) to have made it into this effing book. View attachment 4086471View attachment 4086472Giff is 100% the Chocco Dave to Arday’s Cack Monroe. Dad Arday’s in there somewhere but mostly irrelevant to the entire ‘legend’, just like poor Ol’ Oirsh Mammy Ev.

Jesus fucking Christ. I’m developing a new appreciation for the literary talents of Dr Jessica Taylor!

 

[Carefree]

"Council Estate" is just a loaded phrase with automatic connotations. Like "on the dole". You're meant to immediately think the worst without using any kind of critical thinking.

I grew up in zone 1 of London and still live in social housing. You'd never assume, from speaking to me, that it was my background and I'm not embarrassed about it either. It takes all sorts to make up society and being able to buy your house isn't the only metric.

He seems to have used all the shorthand phrases to hit whatever he's after. It's just he's been caught out now and is flapping about whilst trying to weasel out on the lies.

 

[drmortimer]

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

 

[ButtonDownTheHutches]

"Scotland Yard spent four months investigating a journalist who tried to expose the plagiarism row that has engulfed Cambridge University.

Jack Grove, a reporter for Times Higher Education (THE), was accused of harassment after he emailed a series of questions to Professor Jason Arday about his academic record.

Prof Arday also hired the law firm Carter-Ruck, which suggested in a letter to THE that its “apparent attack” on him “may be... racially motivated”.

The Metropolitan Police spent four months looking into the claim of harassment before deciding in February to close the case.

The police did not interview Mr Grove, who only found out about the investigation when the Met contacted him to inform him they would be taking no action.

The Met also reportedly passed on a complaint to another force about an academic who was also looking into the academic record of Prof Arday, but the other force refused to investigate."

I thought it was Cambridge who hired Carter-Ruck?

Journalist questioned by police for investigating Cambridge professor

archived 4 Aug 2026 16:28:46 UTC

archive.ph

It’s just incomprehensible to me. How can you build a career on an ever-escalating mountain of (easily disproven) lies, then set the police on anyone who questions you about it? How can anyone think that’s an infallible, sustainable, long-term strategy?

How can you live your whole life just waiting for the inevitable moment when it all falls apart? Because I know there’s an argument to be made that compulsive fantasists believe that their version of reality is the correct one, but using the police to deter enquiring minds suggests that he knew full well that his narrative would rapidly unravel once someone pulled at one of the loose ends.

 

[FourSeasonSoupObsessive]

I think all of these fantasists are very good at a couple of things. They are keenly aware of how much people don’t really pay attention to claims- like when I first heard the “three hundred miles in three days” claim, it didn’t initially land as to how preposterous that was. It only really landed a while later when I was like”Hang on a minute”…

And they know how strongly socialised most people are to not call out lies. Particularly where their experience would be expected to substantially differ from the people they’re talking to. So for Arday, he knows that his white audience will generally be extremely lairy of calling him out because they are anxious not to appear or be racist. Jack Monroe and Jess Taylor do the same with class, gender and sexuality.

Hats off, he’s had a great run.

(LOL, I just SWIDT )

 

[SunsetSmile]

It really grinds my gears when individuals portray having grown up on a council estate as a disadvantage. Not all council estates are equal.

In the late 90s I rented, at great expense, near the area where JA's family were. If you had a low rent council house in some of the roads named after atheletes you were very lucky. I would have struggled to buy a small starter home & at the time I was well paid.

Between Clapham & Battersea there is fantastic access to open spaces and transport. As a MH nurse /social worker this would be hugely helpful as you would be able to pick from jobs at a few different health trusts, commute & do night shifts more easily. Also easy to access many top Universities with a broad range of opportunities. Local Council's offer youth initiatives (sports/footballing academies) which are more plentiful & accessible due to geographical concentration.

Certain jobs (key workers inc nurses) are less competitive in inner London as unless you've scored a council property you would only be able to afford to live much further out on a MH nurse salary thereby limiting job opportunities due to availability & cost of transport. A chef would get work more easily & earn more with access to Zone1 eateries than further out.

MH nursing gives access to multi disciplinary teams & you would acquire knowledge of different diagnoses, how they present & are diagnosed and what benefits and adjustments can be opened up. Bit of an inside track in some ways - people who did not work in these areas often did not know or would have had access difficulties. Getting a diagnosis for children would offer potential for various support. His other siblings also reference neuro divergence.

So far from being at a disadvantage I would suggest that this scenario would provide opportunities and means to progress that most people would consider very advantageous even before the more positive environment created by the, justified, need to improve representation.

 

[ButtonDownTheHutches]

I would hope the investigation does continue, because they also have to look into how his appointment was approved. That’s down to the university. But I’m not sure how these things work.

I do wonder if he’s gearing up to sue, as having resigned he won’t have got a pay-off (and he may still have got a pay-off if he’d stayed til the investigation was completed). So maybe GLP are representing him.

Their success record is .. not exactly stellar.

As soon as the GLP / Foxy Kimono hitched themselves to this case, I was utterly convinced that every aspect of this screamed 'shameless grift'

 

[TrashleenMoron]

He used astral projection and actually operated on his own comatose body.

 

[goldenrodshortbread]

Oh dear oh dear. Once you start pulling at the threads…

“Source close to Professor Arday” has me creased! Very Jess Taylor-coded.

And to top it all off, to the surprise of nobody, he’s a shit lecturer.