The Cambridge Professor Who Resigned Amid a Plagiarism Scandal is Now Accused of Lifting Some of His Life Story From 'Sparatacus: Blood and Sand'

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Last week I posted about the bizarre history of plagiarism, exaggerations, and outright lies that caused Cambridge University professor Jason Arday to resign:

At least they certain seem like lies if everything we know about reality is true. It would take all day to go in depth about the claims this guy has made that don't strain credulity as much as they shatter it into a thousand pieces and scatter it to the wind. Here are the biggest ones, done in bullet points:

@NoLongerTheFuzz -  Jason Arday resigned from Cambridge and Jesus College on 5 August 2026. The university had opened an investigation into his academic qualifications and honorary appointments. By then the public record was already crowded with claims that, taken together, form one of the most extraordinary origin stories ever attached to a senior academic post.

Here they are, laid out plainly:

• Diagnosed with autism and global developmental delay at the age of three

• Non-verbal until eleven (or nearly twelve)

• Unable to read or write until eighteen (his then partner said sixteen on national television in 2012)

• Four to five hours of speech therapy every single day from the age of three

• A mother with five degrees

• A benign brain tumour removed a fortnight before his PhD viva; memory loss so complete he had to relearn the entire dissertation

• Later, two further brain tumours

• Testicular cancer

• A road traffic collision that left him in a coma

• Lifelong seizures / epilepsy

• Deaf in one ear

• Ran 30 marathons in 35 days, the last nine after sustaining a hairline fracture that made his leg swell to twice its size

• Covered 300 miles in three days on a treadmill

• Covered 600 miles in six days (later quietly amended to twelve)

• Raised £5–5.5 million for charity (later said it was the work of a 100-person syndicate; the only public JustGiving page showed just over £6,000)

• A severed pig’s head delivered to his parents’ door

• A knife-wielding masked intruder who visited his office twice

• Childhood appearance in the landmark documentary series Seven Up (the BBC has said he did not)

• Inspiration drawn from a depressed former professor who had lost his entire family in a road accident

• Volunteering with WaterAid installing water points in South America and West Africa (WaterAid states it never sends volunteers abroad)

• Visiting professorships at the University of Glasgow, Ohio State University, Nelson Mandela University and others (the institutions have denied the roles as claimed)

• A master’s degree in psychodynamic practice from Birkbeck (the college has no record)

• Years as a youth player at Crystal Palace and later semi-professional football

• Snooker played for seven hours a day, almost to professional standard

• An alleged £1.4 million advance for the memoir

Even if you chose any five of those bullets at random, it's virtually impossible to believe any one person could have so much happen in a single lifetime. Much less a 41 year old. A professor at a prestigious institution teaching a full course load, for that matter. A hundred people living 10 lives each couldn't compete with all these triumphs and tragedies. 

Which brings us to Arday's latest. His memoir is about to be released in the US. And according to the early reports, a lot of the claims listed above apparently weren't considered interesting enough to make it into his life story. Despite the fact he's been telling them publicly for years. Others have been edited to seem a little more plausible.

But his academic record is still out there for all the world to see. For instance, the thesis that got him awarded with a PhD, in which he used the possessive 's to pluralize words 332 times, including in the title. And the plagiarism examples, which are too numerous to list:

And the hits keep right on coming. The newest accusation is that he combined lying about his life story and plagiarized at the same time. Like peanut butter and chocolate, two great tastes that taste great together:

Source -  Mr. Arday, the apparent serial fabulist who resigned from Cambridge University last week amid credible accusations of academic plagiarism, shares the title of his upcoming memoir, Great and Difficult Things, and a key element of the origin story he recounts in its prologue, with the 2010 television show Spartacus: Blood and Sand.

The news about Arday apparently plagiarizing from a TV show came to my attention thanks to the remarks below in the comment section of an article about Mr. Arday in The Daily Telegraph. …

Season 1, Episode 7, of Spartacus is entitled “Great and Unfortunate Things.” 

From that episode of Spartacus comes dialogue that overlaps with not one but two prophesies about his destiny uttered in the prologue of Mr. Arday’s book. In the TV scene, Spartacus’ wife, Sura, utters a prophesy:

SURA: The gods came to me last night, in my sleep.

SPARTACUS: What did they show you?

SURA: My husband on his knees, bowing before a great red serpent, the life draining from his veins.

SPARTACUS: What meaning did you take from it?

SURA: A warning. If you go to war you are destined for great and unfortunate things. …

Spartacus was part of the memoir’s own origin story. Daniel Engber reported in The Atlantic, the following about the contents of Arday’s original book proposal, which Mr. Engber obtained:

Then there is the prophecy—the revelation Arday was given in Brazil, that he would suffer greatly and also do great things. According to the proposal, this occurred in 2005, not 2006, and the message came not from a local aid worker in her 30s but from “an elder in the small town where I had been assigned, who was well-known in the area for predicting people’s futures.” (Later in the proposal, he calls this person a “shaman woman.”) “Do you know the story of Spartacus, the escaped slave who led a rebellion against the Romans?” this town elder asks, before telling him his fate in minute detail. “Every event she described,” Arday writes in the proposal, “has since come to pass.”

Below is how the prophesies about Mr. Arday appear in the prologue of his book, per the final UK edition, typeset in June. Instead of citing Spartacus explicitly, the characters in the book merely appear to effect dialogue from the show.

First there is the scene of Mr. Arday’s birth in 1985, in which the midwife pronounces to his mother, called Giff: “This boy is destined for great things.”

Then comes the scene in Brazil, where Mr. Arday claims he went to aid in providing fresh water to children. There, a local prophet says to him in Portuguese through a translator: “I can tell you’re destined to do great things. But I also believe you’re destined for very sad and difficult things as well.” 

As a reminder, that charitable endeavor Arday says he went on to bring fresh water to impoverished children is not the kind of mission the group he claimed to be with has ever sent anybody on.

As far as the rest of the story, the prophesies and the midwife with the mystical, all-seeing powers of clairvoyance that transcend time and space and can see into the future? Your guess on that is as good as mine. I was in a delivery room twice. And neither time did the midwife hold one of my sons and say, "This one will get lots of zeros his sophomore year because he will blow off homework assignments to play Call of Duty, and you'll have to pay big money to get him a tutor so he doesn't flunk math." As far as "the prophet"? One time as a young man I got my cards read in the French Quarter, just as a goof. And that old Cajun with the necklace of gator teeth told me, and I quote: "You might have children some day. Or you might not." (Nailed it.) But Jason Arday can't bump into someone in a foreign land without that person seeing the great, portentous events in his future. It's remarkable. Or, it's total horseshit. 

Frank Abagnale Jr., the guy Leonardo DiCaprio played in Catch Me If You Can, made a lot of outrageous claims about all the things he lied about doing, and there's good reason to suspect he's lying about lying about them. The man is a Russian Nesting Doll of untruths, and it's hard to know where his facts end and his fictions begin. And Abagnale has nothing on (ex) Professor Arday. 

Again, I love his commitment to the bit. I hope he keeps it up. And makes a ton of appearances promoting the book, without ever backing down. In the words of one the most dedicated liars of all time:

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