Now he’s fallen for the alleged fabulism of Jason Arday, the disgraced ex-prof famous for his long hair and tall tales. The fox-killing, case-losing irritant headed an open letter claiming Arday was the victim of a ‘smear’ campaign by ‘right-wing newspapers’. The claim that Arday plagiarised the work of others is ‘entirely false’, said the letter-signers. As the accusations against Arday piled up, causing him to part ways with Cambridge, Maugham engaged in some frantic arse-covering. Someone uncovered an old chat between Arday and O’Brien, from 2023, in which the prof gushes for three minutes straight over O’Brien’s history-shaping moral bravery.