May 19

Column: A Desire For Notability

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There’s a crushing inevitability weighing upon my shoulders: I am not notable. Ignoring the fact that I don’t turn up until page n of Google thanks to several actually-famous people sharing my apparently common name, my achievements as a journalist have amounted to, basically, nothing. I will not be archived.

Well, perhaps that’s not entirely true. The Library of Congress is currently hoovering up Twitter dust – including mine – and shelving bags full of the stuff for future generations to sift through. Won’t that be great? In 2020 you can relive the fun of me swearing at the Post Office or giving tedious updates on my yo-yo weight. My pathetic online rambling will live on, unsearched, unviewed and unreferenced, for eternity! Hooray!

Then there are the yellowing boxes of old PC Plus and PC Format magazines locked in some obscure basement of Future Towers. If you can get past the spike trap, traverse the invisible bridge and somehow avoid the rolling rock of death, perhaps you can pull out an old issue and cringe at the awful state of my early words. But I still won’t matter. In real terms I don’t exist: I don’t have a Wikipedia page.

I have done precisely nothing of enough note for my legacy to be cemented in a freely editable online encyclopedia, and that hurts. Computer badge at Cubs? Not enough. Appearing behind Terry Nutkins in the audience of the Really Wild Show? Pah. Even if some kind soul did add me – I’m desperate, but not desperate enough to write my own entry – I would be stricken from the database by someone so notable that they sit at home removing things from Wikipedia all day.

So, I would like to put forward these facts which prove I am deserving of an online legacy. Their value may be questionable, but that obviously doesn’t mean you shouldn’t add them to Wikipedia. They’re written down now. You can cite this column.

1) My fingers squirt butter out of the end. An unusual mutation, granted, but a look at any touchscreen that I’ve handled will conclusively prove that my digits spout greasy ghee at the slightest provocation. Bring a soft cloth if you’re planning to let me near your gadgets.

2) I am very tall. Some say I can dust the top of skyscrapers without having to stretch. Others just say ‘Oh, you’re tall when you don’t slouch’. How tall am I? Taller than you. Probably.

3) I am a master hacker. I once hacked into NASA. Sort of. I went to the website. Is that good enough?

4) I am a certified star-magnet. I sat in front of a bedraggled Richard E Grant on the tube. I saw Noel Edmonds – orange and suspiciously smooth-skinned – at a village fete. My wife and I hounded a rough-looking TV’s Nick Knowles out of a posh Bristol bar using the time-honoured technique of repeatedly pointing at him and shouting “It’s Nick Knowles off the telly! KNOWLESY!” Heck, I once peered at Philip Schofield through a restaurant window. I have connections, man.

5) I have released an album of painful electronic wibbling music. Well, I say ‘released’. I gave a copy to my mum, and a few to friends. I am almost certainly the only person ever to have listened to it. But that counts. IT COUNTS.

Finally I think my Wikipedia entry should end with a paragraph detailing my unmatched ability to talk myself out of a concept I was previously excited about – my own notability, in fact – in the space of about 600 words. It’s a talent. A notable one.

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