And morning after, too, by the sounds of it, eventually culminating in the star of the show exiting stage left at 3:12pm. Yes, there's your 33.

If anyone is unaware of what I'm referring to - although that seems spectacularly unlikely, this sensationalist story already having saturated the world's media - a 41-year-old man named Jason Arday, billed as Cambridge University's youngest ever black academic, has reportedly been found dead, following a string of allegations regarding plagiarism and fabricating aspects of his past. The death is reported to be "unexpected but not suspicious", thereby indicating suicide.

Prior to his alleged demise, Arday made a number of extraordinary claims about his personal biography, including that he:

-Was non-verbal up until the age of 11;

-Was illiterate until the age of 18;

-Suffered a brain tumour whilst undertaking his PHD;

-Experienced locked-in syndrome, a coma, epilepsy, and testicular cancer

-Played youth football for Crystal Palace FC

-Completed 30 marathons in 35 days, including completing the final nine with a broken leg

He also claimed to have starred in the sociological documentary 'Seven Up', a documentary that was made several decades before he was born.

More pertinently in terms of his academic career, Arday was accused of plagiarising aspects of his PHD thesis.

The Times reports that:

"Nathan Cofnas, a former researcher at Emmanuel College, Cambridge, who is now based at Ghent University in Belgium, made the allegations of plagiarism in a blog post. Cofnas identified significant parts of Arday’s PhD thesis that he alleges appeared to have been copied from another researcher, Paula Zwozdiak-Myers, who wrote a PhD thesis on the same topic several years earlier."

Arday tried to play down the scandal, commenting to the newspaper that:

“We’re talking about academia here. I didn’t murder somebody.” 

Other academics appeared to take the matter rather more seriously, with Professor Colin Mills, head of Oxford’s sociology department, writing: “I do not want the reputation of my discipline, my department, my hardworking and intellectually honest colleagues, or myself smeared by indirect association with academic fraud, low academic standards, and clownish statements from people in positions of authority who should know better.”

The Times notes that "even The Guardian" reported that academics it spoke to said that the scrutiny Arday had received was “fair for someone at Cambridge” in a prestigious academic position.

While Cambridge University had previously said that allegations of plagiarism regarding the thesis and journal publications have been thoroughly investigated by the relevant institution and the journals in question, and that “Professor Arday has been cleared by those investigations of any wrongdoing", the Arday artifice further unravelled as more evidence of fabricating various aspects of his life and credentials emerged, culminating in his resignation.

Many of these fabrications are detailed in Arday's memoir, 'Great and Unfortunate Things', which is about to be published (it is already available in the US).

And what better publicity for this tome could there possibly be than a high-profile media campaign drawing attention to the man, followed by an equally high-profile "death"?

This is a man, after all, who is now globally renowned for being a fraudster, so it's hardly a great leap of logic to presume he might fake his own death as well, especially when he had such a compelling reason for doing so. There is no doubt the book will now be a bestseller.

This is not to suggest Arday is some sort of masterful arch-manipulator, so skilled in the arts of espionage he can pull the wool over the eyes of the authorities in order to convincingly fake his death, with no collusion from them - on the contrary. They're colluding, as they always do in these high-profile, theatrical extravaganzas, because Arday is what all these famous faces in big media events always are: an actor (he certainly has plenty of TV credentials). He is literally a fictional character, his biography and credentials a fabrication, and that is what all the media exposés over the last few weeks have been revealing to us.

He has simply played the part of cunning fraudster who's conned his way to the top, only to be unveiled just as his star was about to go into the stratosphere with the publication of his book... all in order to prompt a very politically convenient conversation.

What is that conversation?

Well, as The Guardian put it:

"Jason Arday is now the stick the right will use to beat back racial equality. Don’t let that happen."

In other words, this situation has forced a conversation about whether DEI - diversity, equality, and inclusion - policies are doing more harm than good, and whether (as is a key Reform party policy) the Equality Act 2010, on which they are based, should be scrapped.

The Financial Times reports that:

"The resignation of Jason Arday from a professorial chair in education amid claims of plagiarism has thrust Cambridge’s approach to diversity, equality and inclusion (DEI) into the spotlight. 

In response, the university has promised an inquiry into the process that led Arday to become its youngest-ever Black professor at the age of 37 in 2023.

After waves of criticism about the comparatively small share of women and people of colour in academic roles, Cambridge, like its rival Oxford university, has sought to recruit from wider pools, formalise DEI policies and improve governance, notably in relation to complaints of sexual harassment. 

Yet dons and officials at both institutions, several of whom spoke to the FT on condition of anonymity, said the Arday episode was evidence of decision makers rushing to tackle perceptions of being stuck in the past, rather than prioritising a long-term diversity strategy.

Others said Cambridge’s handling of the appointment — and the fallout — risked setting back efforts to build a more inclusive culture.

The university’s appointment of Arday may have been a response “to criticism that they had very few Black academics, but I don’t think you can take shortcuts to these things”, said Priyamvada Gopal, a professor of postcolonial studies at Cambridge. “If you pluck Black scholars at an early career stage and put them into a major professorship, you walk into the criticism that you are doing DEI rather than excellence..."

Nigel Farage, Reform Party leader, who has made no secret of the fact his party would scrap the Equality Act "on day one" were they in government, wrote an opinion piece for The Sun on August 8th entitled: "Professor Arday case proves just how much ruling class are in thrall to DEI… it’s time we dumped this toxic ideology."

Farage said:

"[T]he truth is, whether it’s the BBC, the NHS or even the police, our public bodies are nowadays in thrall to Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

It has become the central religion of the ruling class, so much so that ­credentials play second fiddle to ­identity.

People are now promoted, protected or celebrated not primarily for what they can do, but for what they represent.

Even questioning it can see you branded a pariah.

I’m sorry, but this is deeply unfair.

Even worse, it is incredibly patronising to the very people it claims to help.

It makes me shudder to think how many talented academics were passed over in favour of Arday by those ­desperate to parade their diversity credentials.

Worst of all are the hugely talented academics from minority backgrounds whose entirely bona fide credentials could now be looked upon with ­suspicion because of this man’s duplicity."

Farage could hardly have hoped for better punctuation of his point than the scandal resulting in Arday's death.

Hence, this episode underscores the headline of my recent article, observing that, at present, "everything is a publicity stunt for Reform". Every high-profile, sensationalist media narrative seems to lead us inexorably back to Reform, and how we need them in government to address whatever terrible, preventable atrocity our inept, flabby leaders have presided over now.

Henry Nowak, Ann Widdecombe, now Jason Arday... Would all these people still be with us today if we had a Reform government?

That's the question we're meant to ask ourselves, and conclude that the answer is "yes".

Arday's death also conveniently occurred on the same day the whole country was focused on Reform anyway, due to their victory in the Clacton by-election that had been held the day before, which some press vehicles were ridiculing because "they won against a bin" (actually the Oxbridge-educated, BBC screenwriter and establishment mouthpiece, Jonathan Harvey).

The political pantomime the press performs where certain publications pretend to dislike Nigel Farage (excellent publicity for someone styling themselves as "anti-establishment") is now galvanised even further, where the nominally left-wing media can be seen to berate and vilify Farage for his "bigotry", which they will say helped "hound a man to his death", thereby providing a platform for Farage to confidently respond that: "if I had been in government, there would be no DEI, so this man would not have been hired in the first place, and hence this whole terribly tragedy would have been averted".

This, along with Reform's recent resounding victory at Clacton, puts even more pressure on our cartoon Prime Minister (his Twitter avatar on his formal political account is literally a cartoon) to call a General Election and officially put himself to the test against Farage. Farage, as he will continue to relentlessly remind the British people, has been democratically elected into his current position twice. Burnham, not even once, so he has no genuine mandate to lead the country - whilst the disastrous policies he presides over lead to tragic and preventable deaths.

It's clever scriptwriting, you have to give them that.

Although I was surprised that not even any of the tabloids have gone for my surely obvious headline...

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