A big thank you to Guy Goma: the wrong man in the right place

17 May 2006

Rod Liddle salutes the Congolese man interviewed by mistake on the BBC, who revealed an uncomfortable truth about the way the media works

This was a case of unwitting misrepresentation on my part, caused at least in part — once again — by language difficulties. Inexcusable, I suppose, but not on the same level of mendacity as a friend of mine who was trying to make a name for himself some years earlier on a regional newspaper. He had been dispatched to a far-flung district office of the paper, an area where interesting stories were in regrettably short supply. Dull tales of inconsequential misdemeanours from the magistrates’ courts, suffocatingly worthy charity drives from the Women’s Royal Voluntary Service, the passing of harmless planning applications from the local council. So to alleviate the boredom he did this: he made up a whole town. An interesting town nearby, where things happened. Stocked with vibrant, colourful characters and the occasional grisly murder and provocative local politicians who wanted all the gypsies gassed and so on. He kept it up for a good year or more and nobody complained or questioned these wholly fictitious reports — perhaps because nobody really gave a monkey’s. Or maybe because in their hearts they preferred this town he had created to the rather monochrome, well-behaved settlements in which their real lives were unavoidably situated. Last I heard he was working for Associated Newspapers. Gives a new, post-modern meaning to that oft-sadly-exhaled postscript ‘You couldn’t make it up’. Well, he could. And did. And people liked it.