Thursday 16 November 2017

Rock festival

Doing anything special this coming weekend? Why not go to the Gibraltar Literary Festival?

They've got some interesting speakers. Or perhaps I mean some interesting choices, as speakers.

Like this one for instance.


You recognise him even without the name, of course, though if the publicity photo was still the same one they were originally using, you probably wouldn't recognise him even with it.


So what's our fraudulent friend doing on the Rock? One unofficial answer would be "networking", or less kindly, sizing up potential marks for future schemes in the field of parting fools from their money. Officially, however, he's attending a couple of extremely expensive dinners (you'll be amazed to hear) and speaking about the latest edition of his biography of his dubious friend and business colleague, Tony Buzan.


Here's the blurb for his Tony Talk, which includes all kinds of nonsense and half-truths you'll have seen any number of times before.


I confess I hadn't previously heard that Buzan's many achievements included having
transformed educational theory and practice around the world
and I'm not sure it's worth paying the twelve nicker they're asking to ask Ray to explain it to us.

You may by now have some other questions, which might for instance include:

  • Who's the chap on the original poster? to which the answer is Chris Day, Ray/Tony crony and  publisher of the Buzan book ;
  • Is the Buzan book actually of any literary or public interest? to which the answer is "what do you think?" ; and
  • Would a reputable literary festival invite the UK's most outstanding plagiarist as a guest? to which the answer is "what do you think?" once again.

He's been there before, of course: just last January he gave a "fascinating lecture" on the 1978 world championship , for which (the humble cap-doffer assures us) he was "ideally suited". In principle it's hard to think of anybody less ideally suited to speak at a literary festival, but then again this is Gibraltar, which has roughly the same economic purpose as the Isle of Man. Maybe a man of Ray's ethical history is just the chap after all.

2 comments:

Jon said...

The penguin has taken to using the reference about shared lodgings with HRH Prince Charles (pathetic name dropping but there you go). But did he? He might have been in the same part of the college building but I doubt he was his roommate? Any contempories who can confirm/deny?

Anonymous said...

He was opposite HRH on the same staircase. (For those not familiar with the layout of Oxbridge colleges, the traditional arrangement for rooms of residence was to arrange them vertically rather than the present day approach to student accommodation of having rooms share a corridor.)

RdC