Guido Fawked - Officially A Joke

The month of April comes round again, and with it the increasingly lame April Fool jokes, which this year includes confirmation, as if it were needed, that the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines and his rabble at the Guido Fawkes blog are one of them. Staines, an appallingly immodest slob with much to be modest about, is always on the lookout to score More And Bigger Promotion Opportunities For Himself Personally Now, and today is no exception.

Yep, that made me laugh ...

So it has come to pass that the Fawkes folks have pretended that they are real journalists, which would not be a new joke, and arguably a rather bad one, but moderately amusing nonetheless. To this end, they have produced a mock-up of a “newspaper” which has been given the less than original title of the Daily Guido. Laugh? I thought I’d never start. Fortunately, the properly impartial would not be swayed by this drivel.

Or maybe not: as the Fawkes wheeze was revealed to a legion of expectant fans (Sid and Doris Shammopoulos) last night, someone who really should have known better decided to give them the kind of publicity they do not merit, and he should not be providing: step forward the BBC’s Neil Henderson, who Tweeted “A new arrival at #tomorrowspaperstoday: DAILY GUIDO: Head-Phoney”.

... pity that's not funny, mind ...

And, as Jon Stewart might have said, two things here. One, Henderson sent out his Tweet on March 31, thus negating the April Fool. And two, he’s a BBC employee: the Corporation has strict rules regarding advertising. The Fawkes blog isn’t a newspaper, it is, to quote the words that formerly adorned its masthead, a blog “of plots, rumours and conspiracy”. And it gets worse for the BBC man.

The Great Guido has effectively been a disownable branch of Conservative HQ for some time now. Would Henderson have run a mock-up sent by Conservative Home, Labour List or Lib Dem Voice? Worse still, two of the three items on the “Daily Guido” are not invention: the attempt to smear an Imam in Tooting as an “extremist” to get at Sadiq Khan, and the long-running attack on former shadow chancellor “Auguste” Balls.

... nor that my licence fee money is paying for that

Henderson may think this is just something and nothing, but Zelo Street can reveal that, before midnight last night, a number of complaints - that means more than one - had been made to the BBC. The Corporation’s employees giving free publicity to smear stories and vindictive personal vendettas is not a good look. Shilling for the Tories’ favourite smear merchants? That will need some defending.

Of course, the Fawkes rabble and their pals might just trot out the old “Where’s your sense of humour?” line, and to that I have to remind them that was arguably how London’s increasingly occasional Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson rose to fame. Bozza is the most inept and useless City Mayor in history. And whenever he fouls up, which is worryingly often, we’re asked where our sense of humour is. But it’s not funny

Nor is Neil Henderson’s legitimising the Fawkes rabble. Another fine mess, once again.