Guido Fawked - Hacked Off Fantasy

The highly creative interpretation of yesterday’s lobby event by campaigning group Hacked Off by Alex “Billy Liar” Wickham, newly anointed teaboy to the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines at the Guido Fawkes blog, has caused the Fawkes rabble, and their transient friends among the Fourth Estate, to crow loudly that they won the day by exposing a sinister and unrepresentative group bent on censorship.

Fart in lift Inquiry shows some cheek

There was, though, as Captain Blackadder might have observed, only one thing wrong with this idea - it was bollocks. Wickham sprayed much of his credibility up the wall by doing what comes naturally to him - lying - while he and his pals, by their disregard for victims of press intrusion, highlight as never before the kind of behaviour that has caused a once great profession - journalism - to become debased and disrespected.

Also, it’s good to have Wickham confirm that he was indeed working two Twitter accounts while at the event, Tweeting as both himself, and Media Guido. Thus he was able to talk to himself, award himself congratulations, and encourage himself with Retweets. But on to the first whopper: “‘The thing that drives Hacked Off is the abuse of ordinary people with ordinary lives’ says [Brian] Cathcart alongside Hugh Grant and John Cleese”.

But Hugh Grant was in the audience, not alongside Cleese and Cathcart on the panel. The photo Tweeted by Wickham shows that. In another Tweet where Media Guido and Wickham talk to one another (yawn) he tells “Millionaires and Celebs in attendance”, managing not to notice that two celebs out of 200 in attendance makes 1%. But then, the Fawkes rabble are rather keen on the 1%.

Then there has to be dishonesty by blatant exaggeration: “Hacked Off rally is like a Two Minutes Hate. Dacre described as ‘squeaky little man’ to rapturous applause from obedient audience”. So “Billy Liar” has read 1984, and wants everyone to know that he’s the poor downtrodden victim, thus once again confirming Olbermann’s Dictum: “The right exists in a perpetual state of victimhood”. And there wasn’t rapturous or obedient applause.

There was more: “And therein lies the problem for Hacked Off. Room asks me to stand. I stand. Evan Harris tells me to sit down ‘not giving you a platform’”. The room didn’t ask him to do anything. All Evan Harris did was to ask him to identify himself. It got worse: “‘I don’t know how you sleep at night’ screams a man at the front at [sic] John Cleese calls me a liar”. The man calling him out was in the audience, not at the front.

And it is understood that this was one of the many victims of press intrusion, which shows the crass insensitivity of the Fawkes rabble. Did Wickham talk to any of them? Did he buggery. This petulant creep was there for one reason, and one alone - to prostitute himself before that larger part of the Fourth Estate which does not want to see properly independent press self-regulation, on the off-chance they might throw him a biscuit.

The only thing Evan Harris did wrong was call him a “journalist”. He isn’t one.