Could Ben Elton, alternative comedian, author, playwright and scriptwriter, have a secret life as a scholar of Anglo-Jewish rabbinical history?

A new book on Britain’s Chief Rabbis has just been published by Manchester University Press, written by Benjamin J Elton. It promises a new interpretation of “the most important event” in Anglo-Jewish religious history in the 20th century: the Jacobs Affair.

But its learned author and the creator of Blackadder are not one and the same. Ben Elton, inquirer into rabbis, dwells in Hendon and is honorary research fellow at the London School of Jewish Studies.