Chris Gray looks at the unique relationship between Professor John Albery and his students

The status of obituary pages as a ‘must see’ part of our more serious newspapers is a phenomenon of fairly recent years. Hugh Massingberd made an important contribution to their popularity by digging out offbeat, colourful details about his subjects as Daily Telegraph obituaries editor between 1986-94. The practice has continued under his successors.

There was a corker in last Saturday’s paper on Professor John Albery, 77, a distinguished chemist who served as Master of University College, Oxford, from 1989-97.

The tone for his rule there was set early on, we learned, as Albery, who had a theatrical background, considered how Univ’s students might wish to address him. “Some of you will feel most comfortable saying ‘Good morning, Master’. Others will prefer ‘Good morning, Professor Albery’. For my part I should like to be greeted with ‘Hello, Sailor’.”

“Members of Albery’s scientific group,” the obituarist continued, “were treated to coach trips to the theatre and to breweries (about which memories tended to be hazy).”

His parties featured “games of charades at which students would attempt to act out such scientific terms as ‘backside attack’ (a type of chemical reaction) or ‘weightless piston’”.

At one do, his guests gagged him and sat on him, while one put on his voice and telephoned the college Dean to complain about a deafening noise in the quad. “By the time the Dean appeared, the students had all gone into hiding and Albery was left to deny any knowledge of the phone call.”

This is a rag of the sort associated with the creative genius of P.G. Wodehouse, one of whose characters can be seen elsewhere on this page today. ‘Plum’ would have loved it.