Picture the scene - a roost of gowned university officers at their most imposing and dignified take the ceremonial platform bearing the stately gold University mace. The official music dies away. Smoke belches from behind the curtains. You Only Live Twice blares through the PA system. Enter begowned rector skidding across the stage on his knees.
It was an installation ceremony like no other. Not for Anthony Declan James Slattery the polished oratory of Stephen Fry. From the start the new rector made it clear he would not be stepping into the shoes of his predecessor ‘they’re inhumanly big - size 17 and besides he has a dreadful fungal infection...’ He would do it his way. The star of Whose Line is it Anyway might have taken the title to heart.
In a 30 minute one man show he gave the audience a glimpse of the many men who might be Tony Slattery. First we were invited to see Tony the Vulnerable - to an adapted version of ‘Look at me. I’m as helpless as a kitten up a tree’. Then we had the schmaltzy possibility Tony Cabaret American style - ‘I love each and every one of you...’ There was Tony the Entertainer with a wacky selection of slides and a recurring reference to exaggerated transformations on campus wreaked by Wellcome Trust money... transformations which saw the Tower complex metamorphose into New York. Tony the quip merchant ‘When I was introduced to the Principal Dr Ian Graham Bryce I was looking round the room for three other people’ and of University Secretary Bob Seaton - ‘I thought he said I’m above Satan...’ And there was Tony the master of the unconvincing stage faint - ‘now if I could pull that out of the bag at University Court...’
But the Tony he most wanted to present was Tony the Sincere: ‘This is the most important thing I have done professionally in my life and that is just a fact... My father died of throat cancer a couple of months ago. It is uncanny that I should be made rector here - the centre of so much excellent cancer research. I wish he could be here today to hear this rambling address.’
After vowing to represent the students on Court and elsewhere he finished: ‘This is all I offer you as rector - my heart and soul.’
As the song goes - Who could ask for anything more?
(Press release from University of Dundee)