The Heretics' Guest

The Heretics Club of Oxford University, founded in 1948, exists for the sole purpose of providing a platform for freethinkers, nonconformists, exotics and eccentrics. Even so, the guest speaker at the club last week was something out of the ordinary. Introduced as a lecturer on sociology at the University of London, Dr. Mahesh Helai, a learned-looking Turk with a slight beard and sideburns, had chosen as his topic: "The Pleasure of Opium Eating."

Before an audience of 75 eager Heretics, he talked learnedly for about an hour, peering myopically at his notes as he discoursed on the advantages of eating opium. "I like it," said he, "and have done it quite often. One can consume it reasonably, with no ill effects, but ... it should not be given to children under five . . ."

What About Hashish? When the lecture was over, Dr. Helai asked for questions. From both newsmen and Heretics came a barrage. What was the Buddhist attitude toward opium? What about hashish? Could the good Doctor provide a sample of opium? To the last question, Dr. Helai calmly replied that if the chairman of the meeting would examine the cigarette he had given him, he would find that it bore no manufacturer's mark. The dazed chairman took a nervous look at his cigarette and hastily scrunched it out.

Next day London newspapers were full of Dr. Helai. Not bothering to conceal their shock, they quoted him at length, and one carefully dusted its hands of his conclusions. Warned the News Chronicle, in an earnest footnote: "Doctors agree that opium eating or smoking is definitely harmful for Western people."

A day later the truth about Dr. Helai came out: he was a phony, who had never touched opium in his life. If his lecture proved anything at all, it proved just how far Oxonians will go to perpetrate a hoax.

How to Plot. The story began last spring, when two undergraduates, A. R. ("Tony") Thompson and David R. Jones, decided that Oxford needed a bang-up spoof. It had not really had one since after World War I, when an undergraduate posed as "the eminent Dr. Emil Busch" of Frankfurt and lectured on psychoanalysis. Thompson and Jones started their 1952 campaign by capturing the Heretics Club. They first joined as members, then worked their way up to positions as chairman and organizing secretary. Without telling their 120 fellow Heretics what they were up to, they made up a list of guest speakers. Prominent on the list, of course, was Dr. Mahesh Helai of Turkey.

To play Dr. Helai, Thompson and Jones recruited Undergraduate Patrick Dromgoole of the University Dramatic Society. They prepared an elaborate set of notes for him, hired a professional from a London film studio to make him up. They browned his hands & face, pasted his sideburns on, tried in vain to mold him an appropriate putty nose. The whole process took so long that Dromgoole did not even have time to rehearse. With his unfamiliar notes clutched in his hand--but without his thick-lensed glasses--Dromgoole went forth to face his audience.

As he started to speak, Thompson and Jones waited anxiously, for sometimes the nearsighted Dromgoole seemed to be straying wildly from his notes. For long stretches at a time, he would blurt out fanciful ad libs ("I thought he would never stop," says Thompson). And then there was that terrible moment when he was asked about hashish ("He had obviously never heard of it!"). At another time, after reading, "Some medical people will tell you that opium makes your pupils small," Dromgoole apparently could find only a blank in his notes. But even in this crisis, the Heretics sat transfixed. "So what?" said the amazing Dr. Helai. "I like small pupils."

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