Allison Pearson In Deep Shit

The latest edition of Private Eye magazine (#1409, on sale at all good newsagents and perhaps even W H Smith) gives pride of place in its Hackwatch feature to the increasingly wayward Allison Pearson of the increasingly desperate and downmarket Telegraph. And at the end of a most interesting profile, the Eye notes her response to those neighbours who called the cops to a Domestic at Carrie Symonds’ flat in Camberwell.

Allison Pearson

The row, of course, also featured London’s formerly very occasional Mayor Alexander Boris de Pfeffel Johnson, the man who would be Prime Minister, and whose every pronouncement Ms Pearson lauds to the heavens. That those neighbours had called the Met’s finest out, and then passed their recording of said Domestic to the Rotten Lefties™ at the Guardian, was for her unforgivable. So off she went.

“We really need to name and shame the #Boris neighbours. Maybe record their blameless, unshouty lives and give the tape to a national newspaper. Anyone know who they are?” She was now in favour of doxxing the couple who lived in a flat adjacent to that occupied by Ms Symonds, and sometimes also by Bozza.

The Twitter response showed that this was a campaign destined to develop not necessarily to Ms Pearson’s advantage. Comedian Jenny Eclair asked “who’s doing the witch hunt now?” while PC Andy Moore of Thames Valley Police put her straight: “Most calls around DV are from concerned neighbours, the victim rarely makes that call through fear of violence … Be careful by calling them out as they’re the reason we the Police can protect. #domesticviolence It’s real”. And there was more.

Prof Ros Edwards of the University of Southampton reminded Ms Pearson “I have been the neighbour next door hearing the woman screaming and crashes. You are concerned. You do go and knock on the door. You do call the police. And if you have the presence of mind you do record it in case evidence is needed”. Quite.

But what is much, much worse for Ms Pearson is what has happened to those neighbours since she issued her call for them to be named and shamed. As Jim Pickard of the FT has now revealed, “[I] am told that the neighbours who reported the Symonds-Johnson row to the police have since moved out of their flat - and are seeking security advice - after a series of grim threats”. What you will not read in the Red Tops.

As Alex Harrowell has observed, “One of our most important class distinctions is the one between people represented by big name PR firms, and targets … This is one of the important lessons of #Leveson. They behave like this as a matter of course, by standard operating procedure, whatever the content of the story is. They did it to the Dowlers”.

So what say Ms Pearson to this? La la la, she can’t hear you, nothing to see here. She’s shaping up to whine at anyone in the NHS who doesn’t want to bill Rotten Foreigners™ for treatment. And plugging her next piss-poor book.

But she will know that she’s in the poo now, after demanding to have the mob set on Bozza’s neighbours, now that they’ve been forced into hiding. Not a good look.

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