In our national pantheon of hypocrites, few figures loom so large as Stephen Fry.
After becoming a member of the prestigious Marylebone Cricket Club (which owns Lord’s cricket ground) in 2011, the actor ascended to the club’s annually rotating presidency in 2022.
It was, he said then, a position he was ‘honoured and proud’ to hold. Now it seems that ‘pride’ has preceded a great fall.
During his presidency, Fry was regularly pictured in the club’s iconic ‘bacon and eggs’ colours, enjoying all the privileged trappings of the post – from decadent dinners in the historic Long Room to drinks parties with the great and good.
So how unexpected then, that at the Hay Literature Festival last week, Fry should have felt the need to launch a rant against the club.
Stephen Fry attends day two of the Ashes second test match between England and Australia
The MCC president speaks to the Prince of Wales and Prince George in the box at Lord’s
Fry has come under fire for comments he made at the Hay Literature Festival last week
Fry branded his fellow members ‘beetroot-coloured gentlemen… looking as if they’d come out of an Edwardian cartoon’ and described the club as ‘stinking of privilege and classism’.
As an associate member of the MCC myself, I find the 66-year-old’s words absurd.
No doubt Fry imagined his comments would furnish an easy laugh from his liberal literary audience, who would both fan his ego and perhaps even buy his latest book about Ancient Greek myths. And no doubt he was right.
But he cannot have been so foolish as to think that such bile at the expense of his fellow members would not reach their ears. And in any walk of life, this sort of two-faced behaviour is unacceptable.
Fry has since made an apology, stating with his typical, tiresome bluster: ‘I really should learn to keep my big mouth shut.’
But the apology hardly comes across as sincere. In fact, it appears to have taken the threat of expulsion from the club for Fry to hold his hands up.
For earlier this week a cohort of members wrote to the MCC seeking Fry’s suspension for bringing the 237-year-old club into disrepute. I know I speak for many when I say he should be out on his ear.
There are two things that really rile about his remarks. The first is the hypocrisy. Not only has he enjoyed being a member for the MCC for 13 years, but Fry is the epitome of the very thing he has decried: an old white man of immense privilege – not to mention considerable paunch.
Though he has no doubt suffered his own share of personal struggles, he has also had great good fortune. Private school (from which he was expelled), then Cambridge University and a life filled with plaudits that few among us can dream of.
After having been so fortunate, Fry sought to join exclusive clubs – and not only the MCC. He is also a member of the Garrick – a club where membership was men only for 200 years until last month.
After The Guardian posted the list of the Garrick’s members in March, the club found itself demonised in the media. In a fit of typically self-aggrandizing pique and virtue-signalling bluster, Fry was among those who threatened to quit the club if women weren’t admitted – and got his way after a vote.
Perhaps one can reasonably ask why the pampered Fry and his ilk bother to join these clubs – if only to protest against the privilege of their fellow members.
I believe that the real reason for his comments about the MCC (as well as his Garrick gripe) was simple: he seems to want to enjoy its membership while appeasing those who would rather see such establishments razed to the ground.
His rant wasn’t an off-the-cuff colourful joke, it was a conniving attempt to stay on the fashionable side of the cultural milieu.
But in a humiliating caricature of the membership, Fry has – as my fellow MCC member, the historian and journalist Simon Heffer, pointed out – committed his own act of prejudice.
To typecast an entire group of people based on their age and their ‘beetroot-coloured’ skin is absurd and highly damaging. He would – rightly – never dream of making similar remarks about people of a different ethnicity.
Lord’s Cricket Ground in London, which is the headquarters for Marylebone Cricket Club
Stephen Fry is is also part of the Garrick club, where for 200 years only men could be members
How ironic, then, that he made his comments while sharing a stage with Azeem Rafiq, the former Yorkshire cricketer who so bravely spoke out against prejudice and racism within the game.
Of course, many MCC members are older white men with deeper pockets. But why should they be sneered at for spending their own money sitting stock-still day after day watching cricket? Surely there are greater crimes.
There is absolutely an important point to be made about inclusivity within cricket. And I’m proud that the MCC is at the forefront of the move to improve accessibility and diversity within the game.
In fact, the two highly accomplished MCC presidents prior to Fry were former cricketers, England’s Clare Connor and Sri Lanka’s Kumar Sangakkara.
Let’s hope that the MCC has the courage of its conviction and tells Fry to take the long walk back to the pavilion – and out of Lord’s entirely.