Is Guy The Citizen Pundit In Danger?

By | May 22, 2006

Disastrous news for instant celebrities everywhere: Being mistaken for an Internet pundit on the BBC can bring you to the attention of the wrong people. Our hero Guy Goma, whom we (mistakenly) called a taxi driver when he was in fact an expert in data cleansing when the BBC mistook him for an Internet pundit and interviewed him live on TV, is in fact an illegal immigrant, according to UPI. (In turn, the BBC has possibly taken my suggestion that he be given his own showed too literally and has also mistaken him for a TV celebrity who can be wheeled on to answer questions about EU membership for Bulgaria and Romania. Painful stuff. (Here’s the clip. ) )

Anyway, the UPI story, which could take a lesson or two from my rather pompous diatribe on sourcing) rather brushes over the fact that that the Mail on Sunday story is not based on any interview with any British officials:

LONDON, May 21 (UPI) — BBC’s fake interviewee — an illegal immigrant from the Congo mistakenly plucked from the lobby and interviewed as an expert on British TV — may be deported. <snip> Goma — who coincidentally has a master’s degree in business from the Congo — tried to blunder through the question and answer session, the Sunday Mail reported. <snip> But it also brought the immigrant to the attention of British authorities who may deport him. That would be unfortunate because Goma recently applied for a technology position and wanted to capitalize on the publicity he’d received.

I may be missing something but I don’t see anything in the Mail on Sunday report suggesting the UK authorities are after him. Indeed, the entire story is based on an interview with Goma himself, which itself makes for hilarious reading (he’s hired a PR person to cope with the fame). True, he may be skirting on the wrong side of the law given he only has a tourist visa, but until the Immigration folk actually finger him, or say they’re about to finger him, I don’t see how one can say, as UPI said, his fame has “also brought the immigrant to the attention of British authorities who may deport him.” The Mail on Sunday didn’t say that, so why did UPI?

Anyway, I’m hoping that even if the authorities do start to think along those lines, they will recognise Mr. Goma as just the kind of addition the Brits could do with, and grant him whatever is necessary to keep him on our streets.

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