A quick clarification note:

Following my piece “Suicide Pact – You First” I was invited onto the radio to discuss the free speech implications of the Charlie Hebdo attack. I was introduced as Dr David Paxton. I am not a Doctor. The discussion was underway before I was asked to speak. I may have been in error but I didn’t think interrupting the debate to immediately point out the error was best. So I do so here.

By way of explanation, my Twitter handle had me as ‘Dr David Paxton’ for a short while. This was part of a joke shared between several friends on Twitter about a prominent campaigner calling himself Dr and that we shared the view that non medical doctors were often pretentious when using their academic title. I didn’t try to hide this and the discussion about doing it was had on Twitter, in the open.

At no point did I discuss my qualifications with the producer, he suggested the description of my occupation before going on and I stand by that as accurate. The first time I heard them say ‘Doctor’ was sat in the radio studio going out live. Which as you can imagine was slightly embarrassing. If not a little funny.

This then was a simple mistake by the producers caused inadvertently by my rather immature stunt. I didn’t deliberately seek to be seen as a Dr.

I write this to both explain why I am not a fraud and to apologise if I made the producers of the show look bad in any way.

I repeat, I am not a doctor.

Nor am I Mo Ansar.

Thanks.

(http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b04wtbl4 Debate starts around 01:06)