Urbanity, Erudition and Compassion?

"Before Red Tory and Blue Labour there was David Lindsay. He was arguably the first to announce a postliberal politics of paradox, and to delve into the deep, unwritten British past in order to craft, theoretically, an alternative British and international future. It is high time that the singular and yet wholly pertinent writings of this County Durham Catholic Labour prophet receive a wider circulation."

So wrote Professor John Milbank, a sobering 11 years ago now. Today, Kammiknickers in a twist that Matthew Goodwin is a Professor even though Oliver Kamm is not. He used to have the same objection to John, but at least John was 11 years older than Kamm. Goodwin is 18 years younger, which must sting good and hard.

Kamm has never held an academic position, because he would consider anything below a Chair to be beneath him. So far as I am aware, he has never started a doctorate, or published an academic paper, because that would involve submitting his work to assessment and evaluation. Then again, it would not surprise me in the least if he had either failed to complete a doctoral thesis, or, let my life be complete, submitted one and seen it failed.

Instead, though, he whines that proper academics are unfit, as if he were competent to judge. And he has spent nearly 20 years claiming that I had once claimed to have a PhD. I have never made any such claim, nor have I ever attempted to become Dr Lindsay. I always correct people who so address me, but it is worth mentioning that I have been making that correction since September or October 1996.

In one order or the other but I cannot remember which, I received a letter addressed to "Dr David Lindsay" from Jimmy Goldsmith, of all people, and a letter addressed to "The Reverend Dr David Lindsay" from a Reverend Doctor who, at almost exactly the same time, admitted me as an undergraduate for the next year at the Durham college of which he was Principal.

Sir James was corrected, although he continued the correspondence even once he knew that I was a 19-year-old barman, but my other correspondent left both his position and this country very soon afterwards. To this day, I have never met him, so I can only assume that he thought that there were two David Lindsays at this address, presumably a father and son.

Goldsmith is the only person without a doctorate ever to have assumed me to have held one, but people with their own have done it with remarkable frequency. For example, the Centre of Theology and Philosophy at the University of Nottingham innocently listed me among its members as "Dr David Lindsay" until Kamm noticed and threw a hissy fit.

I corrected it, and it was put right. Kamm had been completely ignored on the subject, as was only right and proper. I have no idea why, but academically distinguished people read my work and just assume me to be a PhD. None of them has ever had that reaction to Kamm's effusions. Hey, ho.

As for the Reverend thing, an old lady from South Shields did once ask me, "Are you David Miliband, Father?" I explained that I was neither, and that it would have been impossible to have been both. Apart from that, though, the only people to have assumed me to have been ordained have themselves been ordained.

Again, I am not, I have never claimed to be, and I have never attempted to be. Yet, among other things, I have had "Dear Father Lindsay" from bishops and from Vatican officials, both of whom one might have expected to have been in a position to check. I cannot begin to explain it, although, again, I do of course always correct it.

I might let "Dr Lindsay" go among my own people, variously conceived, if it were to arise spontaneously among them, in the manner of the late Sheikh Ahmed Yassin. It would wind up Kamm no end, and what is life for, if not for that? Other than that, I would tolerate objections to it only from people who would never have said or written either "Dr Paisley" or "Dr Angelou".

"We hand this woman, Margaret Thatcher, over to the Devil." "I'm not cute or built to suit a fashion model's size." Dr Lindsay would be happy to give his most favourable peer review to that vintage Dr Angelou and to that vintage Dr Paisley, in that order.

As for Not Professor Kamm, Professor Goodwin might consider Dr Adel Batterjee of Jeddah, who is both a member of the Editorial Advisory Board of Mankind Quarterly, which is a linchpin of racist pseudo-academia, and, unless there are two Drs Adel Batterjee of Jeddah, the founder of the Benevolence International Foundation, which was a fake charity that was placed under UN sanctions because it was a front for funding al-Qaeda.

Also on that Editorial Advisory Board is Mankind Quarterly's former Editor, Ed Dutton, whom I knew at university, and whose eugenic views sit ill with the fact that he has been disabled for as long as I have known him, and quite possibly all his life. He also hilariously once tried to seduce me after Mass, so I know his little secret.

Ed recently secured the publication of this masterpiece in Evolutionary Psychological Science. On the Editorial Board of that is Professor Steven Pinker, the Johnstone Professor of Psychology at Harvard, who has very recently written: "Oliver Kamm's urbanity, erudition and compassion are raised to the power of two in Mending the Mind. He put them to work in crafting this gorgeous and urgent book, and on every page they remind us of his moral that enviable gifts are no protection against the affliction of depression." Kamm, Pinker, Dutton, Batterjee. Batterjee, Dutton, Pinker, Kamm. Truly, an Axis of Evil.