Not a parody

"Wherever she went, including here, it was against her better judgment" ran Dorothy Parker's composition for her tombstone. Likewise the diverting narrative that is this post.

Yesterday morning I got a telephone call from a bewildered gentleman at Abingdon Police Station saying he had received a complaint from a Mr Neil Clark. Mr Clark (pictured) is the author of such essays as "Milosevic, Prisoner of Conscience" and (regarding the Iraqi interpreters in fear of their lives) "Keep these Quislings Out". He is also an imaginative theorist of global conspiracy.

But as well as being a fool and a fanatic, Mr Clark is a fabulist, a fantasist, a faker and a fabricator. (For economy's sake, I confine myself to the letter F.) Readers may recall that I once exposed Mr Clark's reliance, in a published article (irrelevantly, a review of a book by me), on a disreputable source that it turned out he had not represented accurately to the relevant editor. The source was a right-wing Srebrenica-denial organisation in the US, whose name Mr Clark had apparently confused with that of the scholarly and impartial International Institute for Strategic Studies in London. As my observation was true, and was easily demonstrated with reference to Mr Clark's own emails to the editor, I was immovable when Mr Clark mounted an impressively inept attempt at libel action. In order to stress the weight of his claim, Mr Clark additionally adopted the imprudent course of lying directly, and in an attributed quotation, to a Guardian journalist, Dominic Timms, and then manufacturing a variety of online female identities in order to remove reference to the inevitable outcome of his complaint. I demur from telling this undignified story further, and revert to the present.

I learned from my interlocutor at Abingdon Police Station that Mr Clark was upset about disobliging references to him on the World Wide Web. Mr Clark had meticulously assembled a file of these, to which presumably this post will be added. Among the cases Mr Clark had collated was an observation from me that, by dint of being unable to read such specialised material as France's leading daily newspaper, he had contributed an erroneous comment to The Guardian last summer concerning the position of the French Foreign Minister on the Iraq War. Mr Clark maintained – as this example surely demonstrates - that he was the victim of a campaign of criminal harassment orchestrated by me.

I sympathised with my interlocutor on his predicament. I explained that Mr Clark had once had an unfortunate experience with the English legal system, in which he had wasted court time at what would have been his expense if I'd resolved to issue a claim against him for costs. Possibly for this reason, after a sobering encounter with a leading libel lawyer whom I had retained for my defence and who rambunctiously explained to Mr Clark that his conduct represented an abuse of the legal process, he now prefers to waste police time at public expense. My interlocutor ventured wearily that the matter merited no time of his, but it appeared from my business address that I enjoyed a measure of professional success greater than that of a man in Botley; could I not therefore just abstain from interest in Clark's pronouncements? I naturally resolved to do all in my power to make life easier for the Abingdon constabulary than it has been in the very recent past.

And, Reader, I am a man of my word.

Comments

[peter]

It's very hard to believe, reading your ever-fascinating posts through this circuitously-routed saga, that Mr Neil Clark is an existential being. Are you sure you've not just made him up, Oliver? He seems to be a Martin Lukes of the blog world.

[adrian]

Boo!

[JohnBSheldon]

Oh well, whenever I have had problems in life your stories of Neil Clark's pomposity and ineptitude have made me feel much better about myself and have made me realize that I have self-worth. I guess I'll have to seek solace in alcohol from now on...

[David]

I think I'll actually miss Neil Clark's adventures on this blog. Alas!

[Miv Tucker]

This has disturbing echoes of Ezra Levant's battle against Syed Soharwardy and the Alberta human Rights Commission
http://ezralevant.com/2008/02/wheres-syed-soharwardy.html)

Syed Soharwardy, the radical Muslim imam, complained to the Calgary Police Service and the Alberta Human Rights Commission because Levant published the Danish cartoons of Mohammed in his (now defunct) Western Standard magazine.

Soharwardy wanted the Calgary police to arrest Levant, but they evidently, and robustly, told Soharwardy both that this wasn't Saudi Arabia, and what he could do with his complaint.

However, it's very alarming that the Abingdon police didn't also immediately show Clark the door.

OK - mercifully they're not doing anything about it, but there should never even have been a question of their doing anything about it.

We seem to be drifting into the same dangers to freedom of speech that Levant is experiencing in Canada.

[Gorilla Bananas]

"and then manufacturing a variety of online female identities...."

He's known as Danny La Rue in intelligence circles. A master of disguise.

[GreenGoddess]

I believe that Neil Clark is part of a world-wide, decades old plot to discredit the human race with his buffoonery thus paving the way for the inevitable Halliburton takeover.

[Gavin]

I'm disappointed that such a valued and long-running comedy routine is being terminated. I feel you should return to this subject in the name of public interest after Mr. Clark's inevitable resumption of his Sisyphean Quixotianism.

[Harry Barnes]

I have just noticed that you have opened up your comment box once more. I hope that it doesn't attract too many of my fellow nutters, so that you feel a need to close it down again. But then you do stir us up.

[Normal Mouth]

Neil Clark clearly has some serious demons.

Why, then, do you delight in taunting him in this distasteful way? If you feel you must respond to his attacks on you, do it like a grown up.

If not, ignore him.

[needhat]

perhaps I shouldn't ask this, but there is a Neil Clark who writes occasionally for the Spectator, are they one and the same person?

[Tim Worstall]

Needhat: yes, one and the same. His piece today actually isn't all that bad: he's woken up to the fact that Cuba just ain't a socialist paradise.
Still, stopped clocks and all that.

[Sempronius]

If Neil Clark has serious demons, the fact that they manage to parade themselves in a moderately high profile way across various portions of the British media ought properly to be a matter of comment.

Having said that - it is asking a bit much for Oliver to shoulder all the burden in this respect, especially since the boys in blue are now being inconvenienced. Maybe other bloggers need to take up the cause.

[TDK]

It's always disappointing when a great series comes to an end, particularly when it ends on a bit of a damp squibb. In retrospect the main character was too one dimensional and unchallenging. You should have made him clever like
Howard Kirk. The late twist of the Tankie going to Cuba and then writing about his finding it not to be a socialist paradise was, to be frank, unbelievable - totally out of character. I guess you were moving the storyline in the only direction possible: comedy and it was bad luck that you ran that episode only days before the BBC screened the hilarious pilot "EDM: Fidel is/was great".

I understand that you have given away the rights and someone else may write plots using this character?

I'm enjoying your new "Medialens" series a lot and I wish "The Chomsky Chronicles" was more frequent.

[Michael]

I guess you were moving the storyline in the only direction possible: comedy

Surely moving away from comedy was the only direction possible, if there was any directional element at all?

The Neil Clark saga has been laugh-out-loud funny from the get-go - remember his conversation with the spambot shortly after he launched his blog?

[David Gillies]

Michael, the spambot conversation was utterly joyous in every way. Even now, recalling it, I am sitting at my desk with my shoulders quivering, trying not to laugh out loud. Clark's nitwittery is of a rarefied kind that mere buffoons can only aspire to.