Covid scientist Jeremy Farrar had recurring nightmare about failing A-levels
The director of the Wellcome Trust has spent the last nine months under intense pressure, advising government ministers on Covid-19 as a member of the Scientific Advisory Group for Emergencies (Sage). Yet Sir Jeremy Farrar has revealed that his most frequent nightmare has been about sitting his A-levels more than 40 years ago.
“I used to wake up thinking, ‘Have I got to do my bloody A-levels again?’ For years, and it’s only in the last year or two I’ve got over that actually. It’s amazing, the scars.”
In an interview on Radio 4’s Desert Island Discs, Farrar spoke about the importance of giving people a second chance in education and said he would be “thrilled” if his story could serve as an inspiration for pupils dealing with poor exam results.
He revealed that he had almost flunked his exams the first time around as a sixth former at Churcher’s College in Hampshire. “Having been pretty good at sport at various levels and being head of the school, I then hit this brick wall.
“I didn’t quite fail, but I might as well have done, failed my A-levels. As an 18- or 19-year-old, that comes as a pretty big shock. I had to resit them and then I had to knock on doors in London around universities a year later.”
Farrar went on to obtain two degrees from the University College London medical school and completed his doctor of philosophy at the University of Oxford in 1988.
He told Desert Island Discs’host, Lauren Laverne, that he felt it was important to show that “there are late developers, there are people that have bad days”. He added: “I just hope we haven’t lost, as a world, the ability to let people have a second chance in education because I do worry it’s become so pressured.”
In the spring, Farrar predicted that the UK would be the country worst affected in Europe by Covid. Last month, he said: “I’ve made mistakes, Patrick [Vallance] and Chris [Whitty] would say they’ve made mistakes, but science has been front and centre.”
The former head of Oxford’s clinical research unit in Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam, said he was optimistic about life looking “a lot more like normal” come next spring. “There’s light at the end of the tunnel,” he said on the programme.
“I think we always knew there would be. It’s got there quicker than I thought it would … The world won’t suddenly revert to normal when spring comes, but it’ll look a lot more like normal than it does today.”