Ric Holden And The Curse Of Mensch

You may not have heard of Ric Holden, and in that case you are truly fortunate. This sad individual, who answers to the title “Deputy Head of Press – Political”, runs the Official Conservative Press Office Twitter feed, which claims to offer “snippets of news and commentary from CCHQ”, but in reality churns out cheap propaganda, attack doggery, and yah-boo cat-calling at opponents.

Holden also indulges, from time to time, in rebuttal, and here he recently came unstuck big time, engaging Tweet some distance in advance of brain. The occasion was the embarrassing realisation that Young Dave’s Twitter feed was following Carlton’s of London, which is not a suitably upmarket gentleman’s club, but an elite escort agency. Red faces all round!

An only mildly fraudulent description

The story was broken by tech source The Register, whose writer called Carlton’s, only to be told “I think there is a wrong number out there ... We sometimes get very lewd calls, which are very rude indeed. I don't know anything about the Prime Minister or Twitter”. I mean, how dare they! And then the hated BBC also ran the story. What was young Ric to do?

Well, there were two sensible approaches to take here: one, do a Denis Thatcher and keep one’s own counsel, or two, laugh it off as a mistake and allow the news cycle to move on. Sadly for Holden, he was too stupid to do either, and instead made up a rebuttal on the hoof, telling James Lyons of the Mirror “because Gordon Brown set the No 10 account to auto-follow-back when he ran it”.

The reason for this stupidity? It's because ...

Yes, the old “A big boy did it and ran away” ploy. But here a problem entered: Holden had not researched his rebuttal first. So what does Twitter say about “auto-follow-back”? Well, you can see a forum discussion on that very subject HERE. Note that, on the question of “auto-follow-back”, the unequivocal response is “Twitter does not provide an auto follow back feature”.

So Ric Holden had been caught with trousers well alight. What can have caused this rush of blood to the head? Has he somehow been cursed? Ah well. Something just as bad has indeed happened to the unfortunate Holden: he has been endorsed by former Tory MP Louise Mensch, now representing the distant constituency of Manhattan Upmarket.

... poor Ric has been cursed by this act of praise

“My @TheSunNewspaper column today – includes why Cameron should sack No 10 disaster Craig Oliver and replace him w/ Richard Holden” she proclaimed. Thus the Curse of Mensch descended upon Ric Holden and condemned him to exhibit the same kind of stupidity that emanates from the attention-seeking but not brain-engaging-first former MP turned taker of the Murdoch shilling.

Couldn’t happen to a more deserving bloke. Say sorry, Ric, you fouled up. Again.