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Gary Glitter loses last shred of academic recognition

In July, the Daily Mail captured the public’s imagination with a campaign calling for Gary Glitter’s O-Levels to be revoked. In an editorial, the paper argued that it was: “… entirely inappropriate for this monster to be walking around with several B and C grades in a nationally treasured defunct certificate of secondary education. It is offensive that such a man is able to proclaim his understanding of ox-bow lakes and his competent conversational French as if they in any way excuse his actions.” A spokesman for the Oxford and Cambridge Schools Examination Board said he thought it “unlikely that Glitter could use such knowledge for internet grooming as the syllabus has now changed”.

Glitter was eventually stripped of his qualifications and the whole question of academic recognition of paedophiles was extensively debated in the House of Lords where a cross-bench peer commentated that he knew of a retired university professor who “had a wife young enough to be his daughter”. This was universally agreed to be weird but slightly sexy.