The Allegations

by Mark Lawson

  Agate scowls: ‘Well, okay. On that one I’d want to add that a course with very few students is a course that has failed to monetize the available funding potential. No successful company would go on selling products that customers clearly don’t want. An educational corporation can – and should – be no different.’

  Kempson, who teaches the increasingly niche specialism of early Chinese history, could rent out his cheeks as an alternative heat source. As twentieth-century British, Irish and American history are increasingly popular with students distrustful of the far past, Ciara, Tom and Ned have little to worry about from any arses-per-classes count. But Tom is an instinctive arguer – Ned, though the department star, almost never speaks in meetings – and responds characteristically when Neades, lacking any other options, is forced to acknowledge him.

  ‘The new Vice Chancellor said that he is skilled at flux.’ Sir Richard nods acceptance of Tom’s compliment. ‘And so we can expect him to flux-up the university.’

  Agate’s blankness is so calculated that it counts as a reaction. Neades’ great frame shakes like a building about to collapse.

  Tom continues: ‘Only a few months ago, before the RAE, I remember Dr Neades saying in one of our many meetings on the subject: “A former prime minister once famously said: ‘Education, Education, Education.’ I am saying: ‘Research, Research, Research.’” Can we assume that promise has gone Blair-shaped?’

  ‘Vice Chancellor, we encourage robust discussion here,’ says Neades severely, then to Tom: ‘No, I think I’m still saying Research, Research, Research. But now I’m saying Teaching Teaching Teaching as well.’

  ‘Okay?’ Tom said. ‘Because Research Research Teaching I could understand or even Research Teaching Teaching. But – if it’s Research Research Research Teaching Teaching Teaching – then you seem to be asking us to do twice as much as we’re doing now, while, if I’ve got this right, also proposing to reduce the teaching staff?’

  ‘Well, I am minded to think there will be a range of views …’ begins Neades.

  ‘Please sir! Please sir! Please sir!’ pleads Professor Craig-Jones, laughing loudly but alone at his impersonation of a pupil some sixty years his junior.

  ‘Oh God, no, not Daggers,’ Tom mutters.

  ‘Yes, Desmond,’ Neades gasps gratefully, glossing him to their guest: ‘Ancient Britain.’

  ‘Steady on, Stanley!’ screeches the elderly professor, in one of his repertoire of actual or invented radio comedy catchphrases. ‘I’m not that old! Oh, pardon me, I thought you said Ancient Brit-on!’

  The VC, the only person present who has never heard this joke before, and with luck might never again, smiles nervously. Neades is breathing heavily.

  ‘Oh, my Lord, now I’ve completely forgotten what I was going to say,’ Craig-Jones complains. ‘Oh, yes. What you were saying about research and teaching and so on puts me in mind of New York New York New York. So good they named it thrice!’

  His personal amusement, though prolonged and loud, provokes no communal response.

  ‘Well, I think we’ll leave it there,’ says Neades.

  As the gathering disbands, Langham and Shaw immediately engulfs the VC, jabbering at him. Kempson is already talking fast and low on a mobile, presumably to a union deputy.

  The trio of sceptics wait at the back, keen to avoid leaving with Neades and the VC.

  ‘What does Fumo mean?’ Ciara asks.

  ‘What?’

  ‘When Neades was doing the John the Baptist for the new VC, that’s what you wrote on your pad?’

  ‘Oh, just one of my jolly monickers.’

  ‘So I guessed. But meaning what?’

  ‘Not here. You never know who might be listening.’

  A Few Words

  Certain years lay under history like land-mines. In letters, diaries, documents, some dates – 1776, 1789, 1851, 1860, 1914, 1939, 1963 – bleeped at a researching historian like a metal detector. Those weighted days were always in the past but there had been a few, during his adulthood, that lay ahead, waiting to be stepped on. 1984, when he was thirty, because of Orwell, although, for tutors and students of British politics, the numerals soon flashed behind them as designating the miners’ strike.

  And then the present year which, if not quite Orwellian, vibrated from the title of that sci-fi series – Space 1999 – that he had watched in the flat in Murray Road when he should have been revising for finals. The producers had picked it as impossibly distant, almost a quarter of a century hence, but now it has been and is almost gone. The world is two weeks away from another encumbered sequence of numbers – 2000, the second Millennium, would anyone this time gather on hills and await Christ’s return? – and then, twelve months later, 2001, red-ringed because of Kubrick’s A Space Odyssey.

  Early for the meeting, Ned dawdles in Waterstones, drawn there partly because of his disappointment at not seeing The Six Lives of Henry VIII in the window display of Christmas offers. He goes, though, to the children’s section first, books always his main contribution to his daughters’ stockings, prone to buying them even more since the separation. But they are at a publishing cusp age – exactly between the sections 8–11 and 11–16 – and, though his habit is to flatter their intelligence by buying two years ahead, the books in the later range, especially the American ones, seem to be lightly novelized textbooks on sex and contraception. He has been startled by the hard-line moralist that being the father of near-teenage girls has made him.

  He moves to adult Fiction and Non-Fiction, quietly enjoying discreet and polite recognition from his viewers: the eyes widening in surprise, smiling, then looking quickly away to avoid the vulgarity of a fan. Unable to find his Tudor book on the Bestseller table, he struggles not to show his fury. Leaning sideways, he finds the Ns – several Nicholsons, Norris – inconveniently close to the floor and moves his eyes to the left: Murray, Monroe.

  ‘Professor Marriott, isn’t it?’

  A gangly man: early forties, with a parody academic’s spectacles, beard and waistcoat, on which is pinned a plastic badge: MANAGER.

  ‘Er, yes.’

  ‘Were you looking for your own book?’

  ‘No. No.’ He can feel the blood-rush in his cheeks. ‘Well, I was looking for presents, actually. But the eye tends to wander alphabetically.’

  ‘Don’t worry. That’s nothing. A lot of them – and not just Jeffrey Archer – come and shuffle theirs to the front of the table. To be honest, we’re a bit un-chuffed ourselves. We were running out, ordered more asap but there aren’t any at the warehouse, apparently. It’s a twin bish because I could have got you to sign some. If you wanted to fire a rocket … ?’

  ‘I’ll see what I can do.’

  Walking down Notting Hill Gate, he reflects that, if the automobile industry were run like publishing, the roads would contain horse-drawn carts rather than cars. He sends Jack Beane a text of contained rage about the lack of his books at a core London store.

  The offices of Ogglebox are in a pre-fab on an industrial estate behind Olympia, although its owner is boasting of moving soon to architect-designed premises in Paddington: ‘There’s no shelf-space here for any more Baftas and Emmys.’

  Tinsel draped around the framed stills from old shows, including Ned’s, the receptionist in a jingling Santa hat – the giddiness of an office just before the long holiday. Ned, though, is apprehensive. To be called to see Ogg alone at short notice just days after the Christmas party might possibly be good – ‘Listen, mate, Controller woke up this morning with a hard-on for yours truly on Stalin by fucking February’ – but might also, for a freelance, be disastrous: ‘Look, Prof, the network has decided to rest some formats, refresh the schedule.’ Broadcasting is the only area of life in which the words rest and refresh are terminal.

  A text from Beane – call me soonest – arrives as Cynth, Ogg’s PA, dressed from curling green slippers to matching floppy hat as an elf, arrives to get him. Her kiss is on the lips and tastes of sugary cock
tails; he wishes this was an office night out.

  In the open-plan office, voices into phones are too loud, explained by the champagne bottles, ragged gold foil around necks, that rise beside each partition. ‘Look, I want to do this deal but I’m not Father Christmas!’ a large man shouts into the mouthpiece, to raucous laughter from his colleagues because he is sitting there dressed in a red and white tunic and cotton-wool beard.

  Ogg, typically, is neither costumed nor intoxicated; it is more his way to file away for future use the bad behaviour of those who are.

  ‘Prof!’ he greets Ned, standing and aiming an air embrace.

  They compare holiday plans and views on the seasonal TV schedules, the astonishing durability of Morecambe & Wise, even though Ernie was now dead as well as Eric. Then Ogg says, in a bad American accent supposed to invoke conspiracy thrillers: ‘Professor, we have a situation.’

  Ned’s heart shakes in anticipation of the sacking that is never far away in this profession. Ogg shuffles papers on the table in front of him and, expecting to be handed some kind of arse-covering letter or press release from the network, Ned is surprised to see the producer holding up, like a prize-winning author at a photo-op, a hardback copy of the Six Lives tie-in.

  Adrenaline is flooded out by endorphins. He must have been shortlisted for something. Aren’t the Whitbreads out around now? And what about this Samuel Johnson thing?

  Ned laughs: ‘Well, you’ve done well to get one. I’ve just discovered they literally can’t get enough in Waterstones. I’ve put a bomb under Beane.’

  But the banter bounces off the look on Ogg’s face. ‘So they haven’t told you?’

  Five words you never want to hear in a hospital or office. ‘Told me what?’

  ‘I’m afraid the book has had to be withdrawn. The DVDs too. I’m afraid there’s been a bit of an allegation of … plagiarism.’

  Ogg gives the word an Italianate intonation, as if to take the sting off it.

  It is the accusation academics most dread, except for moral turpitude, and perhaps the harder to survive professionally, as most reasonable people can understand the temptation to sleep with a nineteen-year-old, while stealing other people’s words is now definitively criminal. Making notes for a new book, Ned uses three different coloured types for public domain material, original finds or insights by previous writers, and his own research or interpretation.

  ‘Really?’ he says, bullishly. ‘Well, it’s become the mud that people throw. I’d be surprised if it sticks.’

  Ogg passes across the volume. It’s from one of the early print runs, with the As Read On BBC Radio 4 sticker on the cover. Pages are book-marked, early and late in the text, by the Post-its that Ogg uses for script notes.

  ‘I’ve yellowed the sentences in question,’ the executive says. ‘The words are pretty much the same in your scripts as well.’

  Ned forces himself to look at the highlighted lines, three paragraphs on the first marked page, two on the second. He wrote the book quicker than he would have liked – mainly in the early mornings during that month at the Mortimers’ place in Tuscany – to hit the Christmas market, but is hoping the alleged overlaps will be arguable: quotes from documents that another author may have uncovered but can’t claim to own, shared phrases drawing on the same small hoard of words for king, marriage, divorce.

  And, when he sees the sections specified, he breathes out in relief. Writers remember which words are theirs, and even where they were written, seeing at once, in newspaper articles or on proofs, where editors have meddled. ‘But I didn’t write any of this stuff!’

  ‘Whoah! Whoah!’ says Ogg. ‘That is indeed the position of Methuen Educational. But I think the Legal guys were hoping our defence might be a little bit more nuanced.’

  Ned laughs, which Ogg tries to scowl down as inappropriate. But Ned is remembering the arguments during the shoot at Hampton Court: Ogg tapping emphatically at the sheets printed in the hotel business centre. The audience may include lower socio-economic cohorts who don’t have a History degree. And: It isn’t dumbing down – it’s respecting the spectrum of viewer intelligence. Or: TV is watched in lounges, not class-rooms. It is a scene he plans to include in his memoirs.

  ‘But, Dom, those are the speeches you forced me to put in. You said the viewer needed more sign-posting. I kept it for the book because I …’ – was writing ten thousand words a day to get it done – ‘because I couldn’t face another row over it.’

  Ned flicks to the final page of print, finds, just above the apology to Cordy and Philly for interrupting their holiday, a line that he points to: ‘I thank you in the Afterword for your input to the scripts and the book.’

  ‘Look, I think, at this stage, it’s kind of irrelevant who wrote what.’

  At first, Ned thinks that the boss is simply avoiding personal blame, a key element in his success in the industry, but then is struck by the possibility that there is multiplied discomfort: on location, Ogg had claimed authorship of the speeches, but perhaps he had been appropriating a staffer’s work, making the words in two senses not his own.

  ‘Well, I didn’t write it,’ Ned says. ‘So I can’t be guilty of plagiarism. You say it’s an educational publisher?’ Ogg nods. ‘So someone here has copied it out of the Ladybird Book of Fat Harry or whatever.’

  The parodic title is not entirely random but inspired by the words he has read vertically downwards – The Little Book of Tudor England – in a small line of books propped on the window ledge between mugs with jokey slogans.

  ‘It’s a cunt, I know,’ Ogg says, in a brutal tone that seems designed to bind them together as men of business. ‘But, at this point, we’re not going to get the genie back in the bottle. I don’t think this is anything that anyone did intentionally.’

  ‘Well, only the person who wrote it can answer that – and it wasn’t me,’ Ned persists. He feels he is winning but Ogg demonstrates the cunning that has made him an employer rather than an employee.

  ‘Okay, let’s look down that road for a moment, should we? Suppose we come out and say: don’t blame the Prof for this – he didn’t write it. Well, fine. But then doesn’t the Marriott Fan Club think: so he’s just a puppet reading other people’s stuff, like the guy on Broadcast News? We can do it, Ned, but I’ve always got the impression that the whole “written and presented by” was a redline for you.’

  ‘It is. But so is not being called a plagiarist.’

  ‘And nor would you be. We’ll find a form of words. “Source notes inadvertently became merged with the final text” blah blah. Legal reckon the plaintiffs will settle for a “should have acknowledged the use of material” sticker until the next edition. Obviously, we’ll pay the costs. I do think this is the best way through this. Team game, team blame.’

  Cuttings (4)

  TOP TV PRESENTER IN ‘PLAGIARISM’ STORM

  An award-winning TV presenter has been forced to apologize and print a correction in his latest bestselling book after admitting to passing off sections of a children’s history book as his own work.

  Professor Edmund Marriott, 45, was accused of incorporating sections from The Little Book of Tudor England, a volume with a recommended reading age of 8–11, in the scripts for his BBC1 series The Six Lives of Henry VIII and a linked book that had reached number three in the Sunday Times non-fiction bestseller list when it was withdrawn from sale last December, following a complaint from an educational publisher. Marriott’s book has since been reissued in a corrected edition.

  The TV series was made by the independent production company Ogglebox. Managing director, Dominic Ogg, 49, who produced and directed the series, said yesterday, after the out-of-court settlement was announced: ‘All factual TV needs to be scrupulous about facts and attributions – but history shows especially so. The audience rightly expects more from a high-profile documentary series and book. Professor Marriott is well aware that he has let viewers and readers down and has been reminded of his responsibilities.’
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br />   Bodily Fluids

  Woken by a stinging spasm from the guts, Ned becomes aware of a field of pain searing from his scalp to shoulders. Powerless to stop the shudder rising in his throat, he manages to turn his head to one side, fighting the agonizing resistance of tendons in his neck, and vomit on the coverlet. It is the vinegary sick of regurgitated red wine.

  Even allowing for the sensitivity of his eyes, the brightness of the room suggests that it is well after sunrise. He is lying flat across the king bed, fully clothed, in a posture suggestive, to a self-pathologist, of having blacked out backwards immediately after reaching the edge of the mattress.

  The bereaved, loved ones reborn in their minds at night, want their dreams to be real; the guilty, waking to goading moments of recall, wish the reality to be a dream.

  Trying to effect movement without employing any protesting muscles, he succeeds in raising himself slightly on his right elbow and twitching a pillow underneath his shoulder. The flatscreen TV is showing a news programme with the sound down. With eyes hurting and blurry from having slept with his contact lenses in, he can make out replays from the day before of dusty, bloodied victims being carried and helped from Underground stations. The public events of yesterday come back to him, dragging reluctant private memories behind them.

  He looks away from the screen and downwards. His zip is split open, making physical a detail from so many nightmares of presenting and lecturing. As he tries to shift on the bed, a new flash of pain is added to those in his stomach and skull by a ripping soreness from the groin. A memory blinked away but then accepted. With gingerly skills learned from sticking plasters, he eases the stuck hair free from the cotton of his boxer shorts.

  The worst kind of drunkenness, able to remember some of it. Jolting moments flash back. The spongy bed in the researcher’s cheap room. Wine poured, spilled. Unwanted fragments of chat: lubricate your, isn’t it pronounced beaver? The attempted kiss, minimally reciprocated. She opened his flies. He opened his flies. She sucked his. He pushed his. Oh fuck, I’m sorry. The big plastic key fob knocking against the door. Just lie down for.