Philip Brook, a second-year history student from Cambridge, has been sacked from his position as editor of The Cambridge Student newspaper after posing as an anonymous female undergraduate and sending rival Cambridge student news website, The Tab, emails claiming that a senior tutor had offered her a first-class degree in return for a first-class blowjob.
Brook’s hoax is believed to have been an act of retaliation after staff at The Tab tricked him into printing a false feature about the new craze of ‘bog snorkelling’ by sending him an email from an enthusiast named Pete Diver. Come on Philip, “Pete Diver”, seriously? Naturally, Brook decided the only way to achieve retribution was to coax The Tab into printing a story that would have serious legal consequences and endanger the livelihood of an innocent tutor at Cambridge.
Taking care to cover all his tracks, Brook authenticated the claim with a fake letter from St John’s College senior tutor Dr Matthias Dörrzapf, which said an official investigation was being launched into the allegation. Incredibly, the hoax was exposed when The Tab contacted Dr Dörrzapf who confirmed he had never sent such a letter. Further checks revealed the emails had been sent from a fake Yahoo account on Brook’s computer. Allegedly, Brook was gobsmacked by the recent developments in technology.
Mike, from “somewhere in sunny Wiltshire,” was outraged after reading the story on the Daily Mail website: “Such a poor attempt at a fraud – everyone knows he should have used the library to send the email.”
At least the emails were well written. One said: “My supervisor offered me a First if I went down on him. I said ‘no’… The academic is high up at his college and he will loose his job by the time I’m finished with him.”
“Loose”? Brook must have felt that his vulnerable female alter-ego, also a student of Cambridge, would be somewhat more believable if she couldn’t spell. Clever.
“I asked him what I needed to do to improve my grades and he suggested that he could think of an excellent way to improve my grades,” it continued, “he’d give me a ‘blow by blow account’ back in his rooms the next evening.”
While a career in journalism is looking bleak for Brook, one in adult entertainment must certainly be on the cards.