But why didn’t Grant Shapps mention that he’s a keen karaoke rapper?

What’s wrong with editing your own Wikipedia entry, anyway? I’ve never touched mine, but only because I’m scared people would find out, which would be bad, although for reasons which elude me. I don’t even know why I’ve got a Wikipedia entry, actually. It was built in 2005, at 1.12a.m., by somebody who appears to have been at Birmingham University. Since then, it has been a lurking presence in my online life, like some chick you’ve never met who goes around telling people she’s your girlfriend.

This past week, Grant Shapps, the new co-chairman of the Conservative party, has been ridiculed in numerous papers for editing his. There wasn’t anything ¬≠particularly bad in there beforehand. It didn’t mention, for example, the way he’s a keen karaoke rapper (which is definitely true because I’ve seen him at it in a room above a nightclub in Birmingham) or the way he was born with a scaly green tail (which probably isn’t true because I’ve just made it up, although I might add it and see how long it lasts). Rather, it just said he had four O-levels, when in reality he apparently had five.

Funny sort of scandal, but there you go. A page in the Observer, a page in the Daily Telegraph, a page in the Mirror and two pages in the Daily Mail later, that’s who he is, the Minister Who Edited His Own Wikipedia Page. True, Wikipedia does generally frown upon self-editing (Philip Roth wrote in the New Yorker last week about the site refusing to accept him as an authority on the intention behind one of his own novels) but the rationale behind this has always struck me as being a touch off. I mean, who is more likely to be balanced about me, for example? Actually me? Or the person I’ve never met in Birmingham, who is thinking about me at 1.12a.m.?