Late last year the BBC investigated a company called Asbestos Watchdog and its sole director, John Bridle.

 http://www.indymedia.org.uk/en/2006/10/353849.html

In response to the damning BBC investigation Mr Bridle seemed at pains to distance himself from his own limited company. In November 2006 he resigned as the sole director of Asbestos Watchdog Ltd. Even before his paper departure Mr Bridle seemed to try to distance himself from company involvement by suggesting he was just the company’s “UK Chief Inspector”.

The embarrassment seems to have crossed the Atlantic. The Montreal-based Chrysotile Institute, an asbestos industry lobbying group referred to John Bridle as Asbestos Watchdog’s “President”. It seems the previous curious references to John Bridle as a “Professor” have been airbrushed from the record.

John Bridle has admitted to having no formal qualifications. This didn’t seem stop him a few years ago teaming up with the Sunday Telegraph’s Christopher Booker to lobby MPs about asbestos. Hansard records a 2002 asbestos debate. John Bridle is described as an “experienced South Wales surveyor, qualified Chemist”. Christopher Booker’s Sunday Telegraph column also published the same precise description of Mr Bridle.

As a result of the BBC investigation, John Bercow MP has had the integrity to state on national radio that he had been misled. suggested that John Bridle's claims are "wrong, far-fetched and misleading."

Since leaving school in the 1950s, it appears that John Bridle has not received any further recognised academic qualifications.

In late 2005, Mr Bridle broke the news to his local newspaper about his “professorship” from the Russian Academy of Sciences. Christopher Booker proudly and dutifully published the news of this great accolade. The Sunday Telegraph news story made a specific reference to the Russian Academy of Sciences. The pro-asbestos Chrysotile Institute then reported on Christopher Booker’s news story.

The Chinese whispers all seem to go back to one source- John Bridle himself.

The BBC investigation confirmed that the Russian Academy of Sciences did NOT issue Mr Bridle with an award. It appears the RAS had never heard of him let alone made him a professor.

It seems Mr Bridle got a bit carried away with himself. He did receive an HONORARY diploma from an organisation that, in these commercial, post-Soviet days, has close links with what remains of the Russian asbestos industry. Such a diploma, perhaps promoted from a grateful chrysotile asbestos lobby, has no academic standing whatsoever.

Perhaps this is why, when Mr Bridle entered a room full of qualified and published scientists at a meeting in London early in 2006, the room echoed to chuckles when John Bridle described himself as “professor”.

The UK Asbestos Watchdog:
… an impressive sounding organisation with the added gravitas of a professor as its Chief Inspector. Can you picture the cavernous offices and laboratories? Perhaps men in white coats doing important scientific stuff? Glamorous secretaries making the coffee and entertaining dignitaries? Perhaps Mr Bridle has been watching too many Austin Powers films?

The Asbestos Watchdog website gives a central London contact address and includes a panoramic image of the City of London skyline. Such glamour is a million miles from a dingy box room in Dinas Powys.

In the past year or so Mr Bridle’s carbon footprint seems to have grown:

DEC 05: A trip to Moscow to receive his honorary degree at a Russian asbestos conference…

MAY 06: Mr Bridle, “President” of the “UK Asbestos Watchdog” gives a talk on a new wonder mineral he (and Asbestos Watchdog’s company secretary Sophie Stone) has discovered called “Casitle” and explains their cunning plan to save £20 billion.

JULY 06: The Chrysotile Institute issues a press release about the Asbestos Watchdog’s “Professor Bridle” in Thailand. Let’s draw a veil over thoughts of what the ageing businessman could be doing in Bangkok…

SEPT 06: Reference to Mr Bridle being an observer at a meeting in Budapest, on behalf of…Asbestos Watchdog, Dinas Powys, Wales.

Mr Bridle seems quite an International Man of Mystery.

The intrigue deepens when inspecting the unaudited 2005 accounts for Asbestos Watchdog Ltd:

Despite John Bridle denying having any executive responsibility for Asbestos Watchdog… there is his signature, as sole director, dated 16 January 2006, signing off the accounts as a true record…

At the time just before John Bridle’s world travel on behalf of Asbestos Watchdog… the company appears to have had net current assets of just £600.

Asbestos was once marketed as a “Magic Mineral”.

It seems a little bit of cash can still go a miraculously long way.