Apart from that, apart from caffeine, I deny addiction – and you will pry that one from me when I am cold and dead etc. And, even then, in the way recommended by Garrison Keillor, you should try rubbing coffee on my lips to make absolutely sure there is no response that is indicative of signs of life.

Just wondering where this collaboration will lead the two of us and how many other renowned individuals have been invited …

Bet he has not invited any of you lot. Serves you right.

Albert S-G spotted my potential at an early age and fostered my interest in physiology, guiding my earliest work in keeping an earthworm farm and the stabling of guinea-pigs, who like humans do not produce their own vitamin c.

My work was later recognised by the Pauling family who took a keen interest in attending any presentations that I gave, even as an undergraduate, and sometimes asked to see my notes…

Albert S-G was the guy who discovered Vitamin C, so he even trumps Linus Pauling, who merely decided it was the cure for everything. Though come to think of it, I went to University with Linus Pauling’s grand-daughter, so I can include him too. Perfect!

Is it necessary to actually visit someone to ‘study with them’ or is it enough to have read a book or a profile about them in a Sunday supplement? In which case, I declare myself a student of Richard Feynman, Nicholas Negroponte, Colin Michael Foale and a slew of Nobel Prize winners.

I’m hurt that no one saw fit to record my very early work in sand as an architectural medium, in addition to my pioneering empirical work in verifying the safety of Play-Doh as a foodstuff. I now recall giving several lectures to educational institutions (otherwise known as talking about your hobbies to your classmates). However, there is no need for me to continue omitting them in my own CV and I shall take care to do this the next time that I am applying for the post of Napoleon or Munchausen.

Theres one for Patrick out there – its called the ‘Walter Mitty Diploma in Optimal B******t, and its the only Diploma where Patrick gained a distinction.

Isnt it obvious why he provided no educational development at Teeside?
1. The bona fide nutrition dept up there were quietly getting on with their job
2. Patrick had neither the where withall or the knowledge to compete in anything other than the ‘media studies’ modules
3. It takes time away from serious ‘research’ having to kick your PR team to setting up gullible journalists and pushing the ‘Prof’ branding before time ran out on it
obvious, innit?

I have an on-off project I have been toying with, which is to re-write my CV/bio in the ludicrous puff-piece self-aggrandizing way that people like Patrick (and to a marginally lesser extent John Briffa) do, thereby showing how easily you can make someone who is clearly not a “world expert” sound like a “tremendous grand authority”.

So far I have been restrained from doing this by the fact that it would be a little difficult without “outing” myself, but much more of this kind of tripe and I may have no alternative.

In this approach, any prize of any kind, ever, including the 6th form needlework prize, makes you “prize winning….”; anyone whose papers you ever read is “someone whose work you studied”; anyone vaguely well-known you visited for a few days is someone you “studied with”; any talk or seminar you gave anywhere, ever, no matter how mundane, becomes an “invited lecture”; every non-refereed book chapter becomes a “scientific article”; every column a “published article”, every travel grant “research funding” etc etc.

Patrick Holford BSc DipION fBANT – founded the Institute for Optimum Nutrition in 1984 and now directs the Food for the Brain Foundation. He is Visiting Professor at the School of Social Sciences and Law at the University of Teesside. Having originally trained in psychology, he specialises in the nutritional treatment of mental health problems. He is author of several books on the subject, including the NEW Optimum Nutrition Bible.

OT – novel claim that I’d not seen before from How 2 quit.

Patrick’s work in addiction Patrick has had a major interest in addiction since the 1970s when he graduated in psychology. In his holidays he worked in treatment centres, ranging from halfway houses in the East End of London (whose residents would sometimes resort to hairspray to get their fix) to residential treatment centres for professionals at the other end of the social scale. He also worked in a treatment centre for heroin addicts.

He later specialised in mental illness, from depression to schizophrenia, and became convinced that nutrition was the vital missing key, since the brain not only depends on, but is literally built from, nutrients commonly lacking in our Westernised diets. He studied the approaches of the late Dr Linus Pauling, a twice Nobel prizewinner, and became the student of Dr Abram Hoffer, who pioneered nutrition-based approaches to addiction back in the 1960s, with amazing success.