On 25/07/07, Gordon Joly gordon.joly@pobox.com wrote:

I always like Clive Anderson's stuff, since his legal training and humour combine well. He was able to question well, and I like the story about Michael Portillo and Diane Abbott, and how you could prove something did *not* happen, and hence change an article in Wikipedia.

That one was interesting. His angle on that was going to be that there was this statement in [[Michael Portillo]] that he *knew* was wrong, and wanted to know how to fix it. As it happened, while the producer was working out mic placement, I checked through, found the same assertion on [[This Week (BBC One TV series)]] and saw that the reference given was the "This Week" site ... and that the source for the story seemed to be Portillo and Abbott's official biography pages for the show.

At this point Clive got that look you get when you look up your references and realise you might in fact be wrong ...

Moral of story: even if you're an expert, find and give the reference when you write it in Wikipedia. *cough*

- d.