‘Always cracking jokes’: questions raised over Jason Arday’s claim he was non-verbal as a child

Published 12 August 2026 · india

The story of Jason Arday’s extraordinary rise to becoming the youngest black professor in the history of the University of Cambridge is all the more

The story of Jason Arday’s extraordinary rise to becoming the youngest black professor in the history of the University of Cambridge is all the more remarkable for one claim: that he did not learn to speak until just shy of his 12th birthday. This claim was mentioned in a letter announcing his resignation last week, which came amid mounting questions about his academic work and statements he had made about his past. Arday wrote that becoming a professor at Cambridge was something he “could scarcely have imagined” as an autistic child who was “unable to speak until I was 11 years old”. His memoir, Great and Unfortunate Things, was published by Simon & Schuster in the US on Tuesday and is due to be published in the UK on 27 August. It tells the story of how he joined Cambridge aged 37 despite having been non-verbal throughout his childhood and only learning to read and write aged 18. But interviews with former schoolmates have produced conflicting accounts of his childhood. Two remember him speaking at primary school, describing a chatty child who loved making jokes, while two others say they did not hear him speak until he reached secondary school. Jonathan Stewart, 40, told the Guardian he remembered Arday from when they were children growing up in south London. He described him as a good mimic who entertained other pupils by putting on accents and singing songs. View image in fullscreen Jonathan Stewart, a YouTuber, said Arday ‘was always cracking jokes’ and ‘would even put on voices’ at school. Photograph: TikTok.com/strictlyvibeswithga Stewart, a YouTuber who says he was in the year below Arday at Heathbrook primary school in Nine Elms, south-west London, said the academic was known as the class clown.

“He was always cracking jokes. He was the comedian guy, he would even put on voices,” claimed Stewart, who said he regularly attended church with Arday. Stewart said that in the Sunday school minibus that would pick them up, Arday would entertain his peers by singing the jingle from the 90s advert for Baby All Gone dolls. He said Arday, a talented goalkeeper, would bring in his own pair of gloves and dive to save shots, even on the school’s concrete playground. Another man, 40, who was also in the year below Arday at Heathbrook and asked not to be named, said: “I don’t remember too much about him but I certainly recollect him being able to speak.” Both this man and Stewart said they were in touch with people who had been in Arday’s class. Arday writes in his memoir that as he approached the age of 12 the local council was on the verge of pulling his speech therapy support because he had made so little progress. “But miraculously, just a few days shy of my 12th birthday, I spoke. It was at the start of one of my sessions, and Katrina [his speech therapist] had just said: ‘Hello, Jason.’ At that moment, I was fiddling with my hearing aid, which was bothering me, and then I took it out of my ear and said hello back to her.” Arday said his mother was present to witness the moment, and that beforehand he had “said bits of words and made various noises out of context” but never replied with the correct phrase or at the right time. Arday denied the accounts provided by Stewart and the second man and organised for the Guardian to be sent statements by two school friends, Nick Clark and Mike Freeman, who said the account in his memoir accurately reflected the boy they remembered at school.