Is it all over for bubonic plagiarist?

Britain's most famous TV psychiatrist, Dr Raj Persaud, will discover today whether he will be struck off the medical register, having been found guilty of dishonesty by the General Medical Council of plagiarising material for his bestselling book, The Edge of the Couch, and for several articles that appeared under his name in scientific journals.

Persaud, 45, a regular on the daytime TV chat show This Morning, and a former radio show host, admitted plagiarism but said that he had been in a "confused mental state" at the time and that these were innocent mistakes.

But the GMC panel's chairman, Dr Anthony Morgan, was having none of it. He said yesterday:"The panel is of the view that you must have known that your actions in allowing the work of others to be seen as though it was your own would be considered dishonest by ordinary people." (Continued below)

He added: "Your dishonest conduct brings the profession into disrepute and the panel has... concluded that your fitness to practise is impaired by reason of your misconduct."

Persaud's troubles began two years ago when, after being accused of plagiarism in a Sunday Times article, the British Medical Journal and Progress in Neurology both retracted articles written by him. This prompted an apology from Persaud, who said it was merely a "cutting and pasting error". However, following the newspaper article, a number of other cases of similar "editing errors" came to light, the most notable being in his 2003 book The Edge of the Couch, in which a vast tract of text from an article written by Professor Bentall, of King's College, London, had been simply copied out and not attributed.

Born in Reading, and educated at Haberdashers' Aske's School and University College London, Persaud was once described by his fellow media doctor Phil Hammond (Trust Me, I’m a Doctor) as someone who can do "what most consultants can't - translate med-speak into plain English".