Stephen Fry cleared of wrongdoing by MCC after member ‘privilege’ comments
The former president of Marylebone Cricket Club, Stephen Fry, has been cleared of any wrongdoing in an internal disciplinary process after he said it “stinks” of privilege at the Hay Festival last month.
An MCC disciplinary process was triggered when a number of members complained about Fry’s comments, which came when he sat on a panel discussing racism in cricket which also included the former Yorkshire bowler Azeem Rafiq at the literature festival on May 29.
The members’ complaints were referred to the chair of MCC’s disciplinary panel, Mark Milliken-Smith KC, who had to decide whether to take further action against the actor and comedian who was the president of the club for a year until last October.
A letter from chief executive Guy Lavender to members said: “Mr Milliken-Smith was provided with relevant material, including the complaints received; the complete one-hour video recording of the Panel discussion; and press articles written subsequently”.
Milliken-Smith concluded that “the complaints have no merit and should be dismissed”. Usually the outcome of MCC disciplinary processes remain private, but Lavender said “Fry has agreed to waive his right to confidentiality” due to press coverage of the matter.
In communicating the judgment to Fry, Milliken-Smith said: “There are no issues of misconduct raised when your comments are fairly and properly considered in their wider and complete context. In coming to this conclusion, I am satisfied to a standard higher than that ordinarily required, namely the balance of probabilities.
“This was not an attack on Members of the MCC, either generically, in part or individually for the reasons I have set out.
“I wish to add however that those Members who made complaints in respect of articles which they had read in the national media were unquestionably acting in good faith and in order to protect the reputation of the Club. They cannot and must not be held in any way responsible for assuming that the content which they read was an accurate representation of the totality of your remarks in that Panel discussion.”
Fry’s initial comments infuriated some members. One, who has faced disciplinary action from MCC previously himself, contacted Telegraph Sport to describe the outcome as “a complete whitewash”.
In the course of the hour-long panel discussion, Fry had said of MCC: “It has a public face that is deeply disturbing, sort of beetroot-coloured gentlemen in yellow-and-orange blazers sitting in this space in front of the Long Room and looking as if they’d come out of an Edwardian cartoon.”
He added that “Slightly embarrassed to be president of the MCC at exactly this time [when Rafiq spoke about his experiences of racism in the game]”, because “I thought I’m the perfect example of the problem has been for hundreds of years, largely, fleshy, white Englishmen, public school, Oxbridge, that are running things”.
Last year, a member, Chris Waterman, was suspended for six months (with another 12 months suspended) after alleging that Fry had made inappropriate comments at a club dinner. Waterman’s claims were disputed, and complaints were made about him, resulting in his suspension.
