‘A Fundamental Foe of Peaceful Extraterrestrials Living on Earth'

My last couple of books have benefited from lots of little bits of help from people who happily spend a couple of days searching libraries and every corner of the Net for some obscure reference I half remembered. One of these princes amongst men is a friend called Josh.

Even though I have never asked him to, he has taken it upon himself to keep a watching brief of what gets mentioned about me in the sort of digital places I never have the inclination to go. Nobody who writes obscure books should give in to the urge to google* themselves because you will soon realise just how inconsequential you are.

Josh has developed a habit of sending me cryptic emails urging me to type in words resulting in semi-googlewhack affairs bringing up only one hit when your name is combined with unusual phrase. They tend to say things like: ‘Google David Southwell prime fucker’. Typing that sort of word combination into a search engine always makes me nervous, but being told today to enter: ‘“David Southwell” “hate rhetoric”’ made feel physically somewhat queasy.

I usually take the fact I have been called everything from a ‘Jewish Freemason wizard’ to a ‘N-loving cocksucker’, ‘a fundamental foe of peaceful extraterrestrials living on Earth,’ ‘a MI5 satrap’ and ‘Serbian running dog’ to mean I am telling enough truth to offend everyone equally. The prospect of my reporting of verifiable fact being labelled ‘hate rhetoric’ and ending up on a fascist anti-free speech blacklist worried me. I already have enough problems dealing with the consequences of having told uncomfortable truths about the CIA, Wo Shing Wo, Soltntsevskaya Brigada and Danish biker gangs.

The queasiness subsided somewhat when the visible bit of the Google hit read: ‘Who is spouting hate rhetoric now?|17Jul04|Socialist Worker’. Offending the Socialist Worker Party would be considered by many in English politics as a badge of honour. For all of their rhetoric of ‘revolutionary vanguard,’ I do not intend to worry about being on a SWP list for going up against the wall until the revolution comes and the emblem of the Fourth International is flying atop the Tower of London. Whatever the SWP had to say about me, I was ready.

Of course, having clicked on and read the link, it turned out to be totally banal and my mention was unrelated to ‘hate rhetoric’.

I am grateful to Josh for his efforts, but if he keeps on at this, one day he is going to cause some sort of rush to casualty – either through inducing hypertension or having me fall off of my chair in shock.

*I am aware that Google has undertaken legal proceeding to prevent the use of its name as noun before now, but I am sure they have bigger fish to fry than me.