I normally ignore Oliver Kamm, although he is completely obsessed with me and even published a truly unhinged screed about me in a recent edition of Private Eye, alleging offences that, if true, would have me imprisoned for the rest of my life.
Suffice it to say that of course I have the email trail for all of the signatories to my recent letter about the Police, Crime, Sentencing and Courts Bill; that it is wildly improbable, and that is putting it politely, that at least one of them did not know who I was, as Kamm suggests; and that that letter is not even primarily about Julian Assange, as Kamm, who struggles with English comprehension but who has a posh accent and manner, seems to think.
Kamm is objectively worse than the Mafia, who have a rule against mothers. He is widely feared, although not by me, but he understandably has no friends, nor even people who hold him in any kind of respect, and it sincerely bewilders him that anyone else might have such things. Take the endorsements of his most recent, hilariously unsuccessful book.
Only one, based in the United States, had any expertise in mental health, which was at least ostensibly the book's subject, and all that that one really said was that the book was well written, in the way that spoof endorsements of Alan Partridge's books describe them as "beautifully punctuated".
The rest, whose opinions on these matters are of no more consequence than those of anyone else, were merely frightened of what Kamm might otherwise have written about them in Private Eye. On that basis, they do not deserve to be in public life. Based on non-sales and non-reviews of Kamm's book, they barely are. And as I wrote in a previous post:
"I was well liked and well respected in prison. That is not conjecture or inference; no one in there minces his words. ... As to those who might contemplate unofficial action, especially but not exclusively in the North East, they should consider that I now had lifetime offers of assistance, with no suggestion of payment, from the persons or close associates of some of the North East's most colourful characters. ... People who pompously professed to "keep an eye" on me should know that I now had people keeping an eye on them."
He says you've never had a job but I used to work with you. He says the other signatories were "six prominent academics" but only four of them were academics at all. Is this what the Times employs these days? No wonder he's making his new base at the Eye where nobody expects any better.
ReplyDeleteSadly, this is indeed what The Times now employs, and has done for quite some time.
DeleteYou do realise, don't you, that after being sent to prison for harassment you probably shouldn't blog and announce that your fellow criminals are now watching someone.
ReplyDeleteI didn't.
DeleteBy the way, Kamm's latest Twitter thread and his Private Eye piece are masterclasses in comically bad "journalism", strewn with basic factual errors. It is no wonder that no one has bought his book. I have the first two, but secondhand in both cases. I would never give him money.
Which of his comments are "basic factual errors"?
DeleteOh, all sorts. That I have never worked, for example. That I sent him an anti-Semitic death threat, which was laughed out by the Police in my presence. And so on, and on, and on. He would be destroyed in court.
DeleteThe Eye piece is hilariously bad, confusing two rival ecclesiastical newspapers (although neither of them ever said the thing attributed to one of them), claiming that I had sent anonymous death threats to assorted flotsam and jetsam (I say again that that was laughed out by the Police; I was there), suggesting that I called for the murder of someone or other of whom I am not sure that I have ever even heard, and all the rest of it.
Kamm is mad by his own admission; apparently, he has written a whole book about it. And he is not in any sense a journalist. He just happens to have inherited a chair on a certain dinner party circuit. Although how much longer can he keep it, one wonders?
Kamm would never face you in court, you're the only person in the world who truly frightens him.
ReplyDeleteBut would he face me at the polls? I am a candidate for North West Durham at the next General Election. Is he?
DeleteKamm is objectively worse than the Mafia, who have a rule against mothers.
ReplyDeleteSpot on.
in the way that spoof endorsements of Alan Partridge's books describe them as "beautifully punctuated".
Laugh out loud funny. You've got Kamm's number and he hates you for it.
I never thought about him once while I was in prison, but he thought about me every day, as he had been doing for nearly 20 years, and as he still does.
Delete