These are fair points and I couldn't find anything of his published papers, so I assume he didn't produce those. Agreed he was not a PhD star by this indicator, which is a good one, but still he would have a high level relative to the general population. The top 1% was of the whole population not of his UCL engineering cohort which he may have been towards the bottom of.
Yeah, he is probably bottom. In all senses. Pun intended