Real Journalist PWNS Fawkes Teaboy

Showing his enthusiasm for undermining real news outlets, while using his own platform to lie shamelessly, Tom Harwood, replacement teaboy to the perpetually thirsty Paul Staines at the Guido Fawkes blog, told yesterday “Big props to [Sky News] for changing their description of the Momentum activist they interviewed for a package today”.

What time is it Eccles?

But not everyone at Sky News was keen on the idea of dancing to the tune of Staines and his fellow non-journalist boot boys. Adam Boulton displayed an equal opportunity grumpiness and responded “IMHO opinion we should never have done this. It is a mistake. We should treat you and your fellow bullies with the contempt you merit”.

Tom who?

And he was right to use the word “bullies”: soon enough, the Fawkes blog was in full Trump mode, running a post attacking Boulton titled “BARB Comment”, telling “As recently as the end of March official ratings agency BARB’s figures show that All Out Politics was getting over quarter of a million viewers. This Wednesday the show got less than 60,000 viewers… this explains much”. Yes, it explains the shonky Fawkes grammar very well.

That was not all, though. The sneering and vindictive Harwood had clearly decided that Boulton be brought to heel, and so when the Sky News man made a Twitter reference to a “fag’n’bone man” (a clear conflation of “Rag and bone man” and a slang expression for cigarettes), in jumped the teaboy to get all judgmental about it.

“Remember everyone, the use of homophobic slurs is totally cool if you're a raging lefty”. Very good, Tom. But Boulton does not use Transatlantic English. Nor is he a regular user of Stateside slang. The term “fag” is not generally used in the UK to refer to a gay man. But even after it was pointed out that it was about cigarettes, Harwood kept on spinning. “because obviously cigarettes are famous for boning”. Christ on a bike.

It’s a play on “Rag and bone”. Which has nothing to do with the kind of “boning” that Harwood pretends. But by now, the red mist had descended, or at least Harwood pretended it had. “Wow Adam. There’s clearly one bully in this exchange, and it’s not me … The unprofessionalism here is utterly staggering. Holding people in contempt? Really?” Yes, the Fawkes teaboy is lecturing an actual journalist about professionalism.

But he was getting nowhere, and nor was former Tory chairman James Cleverly, towhee Boulton gave the brush-off: “People can work things out for themselves. We are not obliged to be dictated to by partisans. And yes I do have contempt for people who pose as journalists and abuse the media to try to shut out differing voices and approaches. I’m surprised you want to stand up for them”. Did he mean Harwood? He surely did.

Worse was to come, too, with Miffy Buckley reminding everyone “This is the same Tom who championed a documented racist, homophobe & misogynist for Prime Minister”. Tom Peck added “I remember being on Sky News once [with] someone called Tom Harwood, to discuss Boris Johnson’s leadership bid. They referred to him as a ‘reporter’ yet every word he said were the lines provided, verbatim, by Boris‘s team. Very confusing for viewers”.

Tom Harwood is an habitual liar, a vindictive creep prepared to maliciously smear anyone who declines to do as he wishes. Adam Boulton is right to stand up to his bullying. And it’s high time everyone else in the media world did the same. At long last.

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