‘Stephen Fry’s a shame. He loved the perks then bit the hand that fed.’ As comic apologises for calling cricket membership members ‘beetroot-coloured’, BARBARA DAVIES reveals they’re being begged to simply accept his apology – however are in no temper to forgive…

On an English summer time’s day, there are few extra nice locations to be than Lord’s Cricket Floor in London, listening to the light thwack of leather-based on willow.

‘There may be nowhere else on the floor of the planet that’s higher to be than right here, now, as we speak,’ declared actor, author and cricket devotee Stephen Fry. He was talking in 2013, simply two years after securing himself a coveted membership of Marylebone Cricket Membership.

Quick ahead a decade and the 66-year-old former QI host appeared quite much less enamoured with the world’s most well-known cricket membership when he spoke to crowds at Hay Literature Competition final month, claiming that the 237-year-old MCC ‘has a public face that’s deeply disturbing, type of, beetroot-coloured gents in yellow and orange blazers’ and ‘trying as in the event that they’d come out of an Edwardian cartoon’.

Privately-educated Cambridge graduate Fry went on to criticise the membership for ‘stinking of privilege and classism’, a considerably incongruous outburst given his personal background, to not point out his year-long tenure as MCC president which solely ended final autumn.

Cue a collective howl of shock from the membership’s hallowed grounds in St John’s Wooden, to not point out calls for from some aghast members the actor have to be disciplined for bringing into disrepute their beloved establishment, which was based in 1787 and to this present day is the arbiter of cricketing guidelines all over the world.

For whereas Fry has been furiously back-pedalling final week, asking for forgiveness for being a ‘full clot’ and failing to maintain ‘my large mouth shut’, this ungentlemanly row on the ‘residence of cricket’, dubbed ‘Frygate’ inside membership circles, is rising apace.

Rule 6.1 of the membership’s structure states that members should respect and help one another. Failure to take action or inappropriate behaviour or language is taken into account a breach of the foundations and renders a member liable to suspension or expulsion. 

However MCC members who’ve formally complained about Fry’s behaviour have been contacted by chief government, Man Lavender, and requested, by way of an e mail proven to the Each day Mail, to simply accept Fry’s apology.

‘It’s clear to me that Stephen regrets his feedback and specifically the destructive press protection that MCC has acquired in consequence,’ wrote former military officer Mr Lavender, who spent 18 years within the Parachute Regiment and left as a Lieutenant Colonel.

‘I’ve accepted his apology personally. I hope that you could be end up in a position to take action too.’

As one disgruntled member instructed me: ‘They’re making an attempt to keep away from a nasty disciplinary course of by getting folks to withdraw their complaints. It’s outrageous, notably on condition that complaints are supposed to be nameless.

‘Stephen Fry is a shame and must be suspended if he doesn’t do the honourable factor and resign. How two-faced are you able to be? He turned MCC president and loved all of the perks and honours of that job after which goes and bites the hand that fed him so properly for a 12 months. Members are sick of his hypocrisy. The membership’s on-line message boards are on fireplace with outrage.’

Apologising profusely by e mail this week ‘for my stupidity’, Fry stated that what had come throughout as criticism of the membership was meant to be ‘the precise reverse’ and that ‘I didn’t actually get time to make the case for the membership as clearly as I ought to have’.

He added: ‘Please be assured that I really like, honour, worth, respect and admire this excellent membership of ours. I’m proud to consider all it does for cricket and I curse myself for the current flurry of consideration I’ve induced.’

One who is aware of him instructed me: ‘He’s essentially an excellent individual however he’s very self-conscious about his privileged background and typically doesn’t assume earlier than talking. He’s very sorry about what he stated at Hay.’

Legendary cricket commentator Henry Blofeld, who has been an MCC member for 60 years, added his well-known voice to the melee this week, saying: ‘I’m very sad that final 12 months’s president desires to advantage sign on this approach. Is that this bit about “beetroot complexion” what he actually believes or is nearly him? 

‘He have to be cautious when the the port decanter subsequent lands in entrance of him. I all the time thought it was the job of the president, previous, current and future, to convey the membership collectively, to not drive a wedge into the membership.’

However even earlier than he was handed the year-long presidency in 2022, Fry was making an attempt out his chosen leitmotif on members of the £667-a-year membership which at the moment has a ready record of 29 years for full membership.

Invited in 2021 to ship MCC’s annual Spirit of Cricket lecture, held in honour of late Kent and England cricketer Colin Cowdrey, Fry opened his hour-long speech by asking: ‘Do we want one other ageing white male from the center of the institution to lecture us in plummy tones on the spirit of cricket? I very severely thought of, regardless of the honour and the already printed invites, recusing myself from this gig and dashing this poisoned chalice from my lips.’

The ‘awkward reality’, he added, was that ‘I come from precisely the cultural and social pool whose embarrassing legacy cricket, particularly cricket on this nation, most must shake off’.

He stated that ‘whereas it will be grotesquely slimy for me to apologise for the circumstances of my beginning, ethnicity and training, it’s simply as slimy and grotesque to not recognise how comparatively straightforward it has been for folks like me to accumulate and afford membership of this membership.’

Given this verbal self-flagellation, the surprise is that Fry later accepted the ‘actually humbling’ provide to grow to be MCC president.

However his appointment, as successor to Claire Connor, the previous England cricket captain who was the membership’s first ever feminine president, got here amid the continuing fall-out of the racism scandal at Yorkshire County Cricket Membership in 2020.

‘There are many boils on the physique of cricket,’ he declared throughout his Cowdrey Lecture again in November 2021. ‘And when, as within the Yorkshire case, they erupt and burst their noxious matter over the entrance pages it behoves us all to make an enormous effort to grasp what’s going on, what it means and the way it may be addressed.’

Fry’s superstar standing, alongside along with his message that ‘significant structural change can occur’ clearly made him seem a really perfect alternative for the presidential position.

Saying his appointment six months later, in Could 2022, Connor, who’s now deputy chief government of England and Wales Cricket Board, stated his lecture had ‘confirmed the extent to which he understands the challenges and alternatives that each MCC and cricket face’.

She added: ‘He has a deep love and take care of cricket and might be an exquisite ambassador for MCC.’

Fry, who took up the presidential reins in October 2023, clearly had enthusiasm for the job.

Regardless of having a ‘loathing for sport’ since childhood, his love of cricket was born on the genteel Buckinghamshire garden of Sir Oliver Popplewell, former choose and ex-MCC president, the place Fry used to play the sport as a toddler.

Woman Popplewell gave Fry his first P. G. Wodehouse novel which additional engendered his love of the sport.

His first hero was South African Mike Procter ‘as a result of my prep college was in Gloucestershire and so we’d go and see him taking part in’.

At Uppingham, the general public college he later attended in Rutland, his love of the sport burgeoned even if he was, by his personal admission, ‘a talentless non-player’.

Membership of the MCC is notoriously exhausting to come back by. These on the endless wait record are stated to eagerly scan newspaper obituary pages for information of these days departed members.

Members pay an ‘entrance price’ of round £1,250 after they first grow to be members. In 2020, to assist make up £30m in misplaced income as a consequence of Covid, the MCC provided life membership packages enabling these on the ready record to leap the queue. Amongst those that took benefit of the provide was then Residence Secretary Priti Patel who paid £45,000 for hers. 

Previous luminaries embody Prince Philip, billionaire philanthropist Sir Paul Getty and playwright Sir Harold Pinter. Present members embody the King who has been a member since 1975, Mick Jagger, former PMs Sir John Main and Theresa Could and lyricist Sir Tim Rice.

Membership brings the assure of a seat at matches and entry to the Pavilion, affectionally often called the ‘Pavvy’ and its historic Lengthy Room, which is furnished with work, artefacts and memorabilia.

As soon as Fry turned president, it wasn’t lengthy earlier than he was getting his conventional ‘egg and bacon’ striped membership tie in a twist.

In February final 12 months, the membership was urged to take disciplinary motion towards the star after he allegedly made offensive jokes at a proper MCC dinner, referring to ‘shagging’ – a few of these current stated he was mocking the membership for its under-representation of ladies – in addition to to the ‘Allahakberries’, an beginner cricket staff based by Peter Pan writer J M Barrie.

Fry allegedly joked that when used as we speak, the phrase ‘Allahu akbar’ is often ‘adopted by a loud bang’.

Nonetheless, the membership reportedly insisted the accusation was ‘incorrect’ and a few company stated the comic was misheard.

Chris Waterman, an MCC member since 1988, complained that the jokes have been ‘egregious’ however was handed an 18-month suspension after committee members claimed he, and never Fry, had introduced the MCC into disrepute for making his allegations public.

When contacted by the Mail this week, Mr Waterman stated that it will be ‘outrageous’ if Fry wasn’t now disciplined for his remarks concerning the MCC.

‘He’s gone on concerning the membership being filled with outdated duffers however he’s certainly one of them. He was showboating in entrance of an viewers,’ stated Mr Waterman, who has known as for extra openness throughout the MCC and a extra democratic system of electing committee members.

At present those that want to stand are first vetted by a ‘nominations committee’ which Mr Waterman claims ‘rejects any member who doesn’t match the MCC mould’.

‘Stephen Fry must be suspended, if not expelled, from the MCC for his feedback,’ Mr Waterman added. ‘As a substitute he’s grovelling for forgiveness to try to make these complaints go away, with the help of the chief government which is shameful. Members is not going to be leaned on like this. They’ve had sufficient.’

Fry was joined on the stage at Hay Literature Competition in Powys on the finish of final month by Azeem Rafiq, the previous Yorkshire cricketer who despatched shockwaves by English cricket in 2020 when he spoke out about racism within the sport.

His marketing campaign prompted the Unbiased Fee for Fairness in Cricket to launch an investigation. It discovered final 12 months that the game was racist, sexist and elitist.

In recent times the MCC, which has admitted ladies members since 1998, has spear-headed key modifications to make the game extra inclusive.

It has ditched the time period ‘batsman’ for the extra gender-neutral ‘batter’ and launched a ‘Younger Feminine Broadcaster of the Yr’ competitors with Sky Sports activities. Final month, it introduced it had grow to be the primary cricket membership to grow to be totally accessible to deaf followers because of an indication studying video relay service.

The membership’s personal charitable arm, the MCC Basis, of which Stephen Fry is patron, additionally runs a community of 126 ‘Cricket Hubs’ throughout the UK, offering free coaching and match play to greater than 4,700 state college youngsters in a bid to open up and diversify the sport.

It has arrange outreach initiatives in Lebanon, Nepal, Rwanda, Uganda and Kenya.

Mockingly, in current weeks, the Basis has been selling ‘An Night With Stephen Fry’ on the Royal Albert Corridor in September, the proceeds of which might be donated to the charity’s initiatives.

How the MCC finally responds to ‘Fry-gate’ stays to be seen.

Previously, the committee has not shied away from suspending those that fall foul of the foundations. In July final 12 months, one member was expelled and two have been suspended for bringing ‘disgrace’ on the membership following an altercation within the Lengthy Room with Australia’s cricket staff in the course of the Ashes Check match towards England.

Two years in the past, MCC chairman Bruce Carnegie-Brown was handed a six-month suspension – suspended for 2 years – after joking that members have been ‘taking an age to empty their colostomy baggage’ throughout a break at a Lord’s assembly, not realising that his microphone was on.

A contrite Carnegie-Brown additionally made a ‘vital private’ donation to the charity Colostomy UK.

Again in 2002, best-selling writer and Conservative politician Lord Archer, who spent hundreds on shopping for turf from Lord’s to move to his Cambridgeshire backyard, was suspended for seven years after he was despatched to jail for committing perjury – three years longer than the four-year jail sentence he acquired.

And but, one other member who spoke to the the Mail this week, is adamant that MCC executives will need to keep away from any additional destructive publicity by suspending Fry.

‘They’ll in all probability drop him a line and say, “Look, outdated boy, may you do us a favour and simply shut up concerning the membership until you need to say one thing good about it.” I feel that’s so far as it’s going to go.’