It was ‘accidental identity theft’ by Guy on Guy.
How did it happen? Who can say. As is sometimes the case, the incorrect explanation was the first explanation to hit the news wires. I went surfing, partly in a futile attempt to discover how the lie got out. As Mark Twain once said, “a lie can travel half way round the world while the truth is putting its shoes on”. In fact it took a few days for the truth to get its shoes on in this instance.
Here’s the wrong story:
“Guy Goma is a London cabbie (or possibly limo driver) waiting in the BBC reception with a sign or note indicating ‘Guy Kewney’ the IT expert who is to be interviewed. He is there to pick Guy up after the interview. Some BBC person grabs him and drags him into a studio where, much to his surprise, the cameras point at him and Karen Bowerman, a reasonably well known BBC interviewer, starts asking him questions about Apple v Apple. His replies are less than illuminating and the BBC quickly cuts to a “reporter at large” as Karen and the production team realize that something is not quite right.”
That spontaneous untruth is accompanied by the genuine fact that:
Guy Kewney sat in reception actually watching the live broadcast, realizing that somehow a black guy from the Congo with an endearing French accent, who probably never even knew that the Apple case had happened, was failing to say anything comprehensible about it.
The UK’s Mail on Sunday even printed an appeal for information as to who this Taxi driver was.
It was a few days before the true story (or one that actually made sense) emerged:
“Guy Goma was, in fact, a candidate for an IT job at the BBC. Hence when collected at reception for an interview (Guy being mistaken for Guy) never thought that anything untoward was happening until they put a mike on him. Even then he just assumed it was an odd BBC procedure until he was led into the studio… You can see this from the “deer-in-the-headlights” look on his face when asked a question about Apple v Apple.”
From then on it’s 15 minutes of fame for Guy Goma, who is suddenly in great demand and giving his opinions on everything from England’s chances in the World Cup to the price of eggs. By the Friday of the week he is appearing on the Jonathan Ross show to rapturous applause from the audience. The deer-in-the-headlights is now the darling in the spotlights—that is until someone discovers that he doesn’t actually have a work visa for the UK. He’s been in the country for 4 years on a tourist visa and shouldn’t be here and certainly shouldn’t be trying to get work.
I’m not sure how much Guy’s 15 minutes of fame are worth, but it may turn out that the appearance fees he’s been paid (and he must have been receiving some because he now has a PR agent) don’t compensate for his now-likely expulsion from the UK.
Anyway, how did the wrong story get out? Surfing didn’t lead me to an answer. My best theory is “the theory of the incomplete story”. A story emerges and some reporter somewhere tries to find out all the pertinent details. However some of the details cannot be found. What to do? If it’s real news, why not just invent the story. You contact the receptionist at the BBC and ask her how it happened. She says, “maybe he was a taxi driver” so you make him a taxi-driver and file the story. The story now syndicates without anyone checking a single fact. Suddenly, the untruth is out there.
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