University press officers can put a positive spin on even the most tumultuous events, but what are they really thinking when things don¡¯t go their way?

An extraordinary message from a head of communications to his team, obtained by?³ÉÈËVRÊÓƵ, can now give some insight into the normally guarded views of spinners under siege.

In the message, Charles Hymas, who was until recently UCL¡¯s director of media relations, outlines his impressions of an informal meeting about the university¡¯s ?483 million?plan?to build a new campus in east London. At the end, 94 per cent of the more than 100 academics present voted that they had no confidence in UCL¡¯s governance.

That motion was raised by Tony Segal, professor of medicine at UCL, whose criticisms did not sit well with Mr Hymas, who??spent 26 years at The?Sunday Times.

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In his email, written on 14 February, he describes how ¡°Professor I¡¯m Not Pursuing a Vendetta Man¡± had told the?meeting that he ¡°was not pursuing a vendetta¡­[but] then proceeded to stick the knife into the provost [Michael Arthur] and the chair of council Dame DeAnne Julius for their autocratic bullying rule which had left the entire¡­UCL academic community cowed into a blithering jelly of fear¡±.

¡°Professor I¡¯m Not Pursuing a Vendetta Man was preaching to the converted, who hung on his every word and clapped every single twist of the knife,¡± Mr Hymas continues.

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His invective against ¡°business interests sullying the white sepulchre of academia¡± was met with such rapturous support that the meeting ¡°turned into something more akin to a Roman amphitheatre where any slave felt to be worshipping the God Mammon was going to be bayed down by the bloodthirsty crowd,¡± recounts Mr Hymas.

¡°Despite my best efforts to press as many No buttons as I could in order to swing the vote in favour of reason, we went crashing down to a 94 [per cent] to 6 [per cent] vote,¡± Mr Hymas adds.

Indeed, there was ¡°such a frenzy of hatred against the evil management of UCL that they would have made a blind, three-legged elephant provost of UCL¡± by the end, he says.

The encounter led him to speculate about the wisdom of, metaphorically, using a ¡°sharpened medical scalpel [to] take out a sensitive part of Professor I¡¯m Not Pursuing a Vendetta Man¡¯s anatomy without an anaesthetic¡±.

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Mr Hymas¡¯ wrath was not confined to Professor Segal, describing the meeting¡¯s chair, Lord Young of Graffham, as having the ¡°smug patrician air of a multi-millionaire Tory businessman¡±. An unnamed earth science professor who claimed that ¡°producing one brilliant paper a year [was] what true academia was about¡± was derided as ¡°Professor I¡¯m a True Intellectual¡±.

A UCL spokesman said that the email was ¡°not sanctioned by UCL and [its author] has left to pursue other opportunities¡±, adding that the university had ¡°[apologised] to all those affected¡±.

jack.grove@timeshighereducation.com