Fame or Infamy ...

[caz]

Well I wouldn't like to presume, Capps.

Love,

Caz
X

[cappuccina]

Wow, Susan Boyle is posting here?????? Really?????????

[caz]

.. presuming that it is all 'fantasy'.

You presume correctly.

My intention has been to stand by him, as I do remember saying
I would many years ago.
Some events I recall, do fit his story, but not to the extent that Steve has said.

The Victoria who spoke to Shirley on the phone had no recollection of Anne Graham, which made sense because the Victoria who was known to Anne Graham while she was in Australia was a different Victoria. Who knows that you are not a third Victoria? Once SB got his fantasy ball rolling he made it very difficult for anyone to believe anything ever again in an Aussie diary context.

Not my fault, not my problem.

.. he also believes 100% in what he says.
That of course does not make it all correct.

You could be right, although that would be terribly worrying, wouldn't it? Equally, it wouldn't make any of it correct.

I agreed the other day that SB probably needed help rather than any further ridicule, when he made it 100% clear in his book that he could never have set eyes on the diary. He won't know why that is and I don't propose to tell him.

And after years of talking to you here .. you cannot 'see' even through this medium
that I am a different person to SB ..

I didn't say that. I said that this medium doesn't tell me who you are, without your help. A few posters have voiced their belief that you are SB, and there may be many more who believe it but say nothing. All I'm saying is that you have done nothing to disabuse your readers of that belief and everything you possibly can (down to the way you and SB format your posts in an identical fashion - just look at them - I don't think I've seen any other poster do it like you two do) to nurture it.

If you wanted to make it clear to everyone that you are your own person, and not some appendage of a fantasist, you could have done so. You have chosen to make a mystery of your identity and your motives.

Again, not my fault and certainly not my problem.

Have a nice weekend, whoever you are and whatever you are still doing here.

Love,

Caz
X

[Victoria]

I thought that it was very, very obvious that I was making a joke
of being SB.

I shall be more careful from now on, I thought the readers were intelligent
and could understand the lightheartness that was intended by it.

Thank you Caz for enlightening me on how easily I can 'convince' the
unwary!

As for 'trying to encourage the fantasy' as you put it, yes to that I
must be guilty .. presuming that it is all 'fantasy'.
My intention has been to stand by him, as I do remember saying
I would many years ago.
Some events I recall, do fit his story, but not to the extent that Steve has said.
I know he is not a deliberate liar .. he also believes 100% in what he says.
That of course does not make it all correct.
He is an honest, decent and good human being, with good intentions at heart,
and does not deserve ridicule ..
and neither does anyone.

And after years of talking to you here .. you cannot 'see' even through this medium
that I am a different person to SB ..
well there is no hope in 'bloody hell' for you my friend.

ps.
said in a lighthearted and friendly manner .. with no offence intended ..
in case you have any doubts.

[caz]

She has no doubt as to my identity as being different to that of
our Steve/SB.

How the bloody hell am I supposed to know who you really are and who Steve really is? And why should I care? All SB ever did on the boards was to tell silly, easily exposed lies about himself and others, luring the unwary into drip feeding him bits of info (including a few rubbish sources from the look of it) so he could cobble it all together for his badly written book about a life not experienced, people never met and events that didn't happen.

All you ever did in related posts was to try and encourage the fantasy. So while I can quite understand why you would now want to dissociate yourself from SB, and insist you have your own mind - and body, it's all too late to whine about it if you have managed to convince your readers that you are SB in a frock.

Love,

Caz
X

[Victoria]

[QUOTE=caz

'Victoria' actually signed a couple of his/her recent posts 'Steve' or 'SB' (Stevie Baby), which may or may not have been in jest. I would say this leaves us free to refer to him/her as either from now on.

Love,

Caz
X[/QUOTE]

Hello Livia,

our dearest Caz here, just in case you had not realised .. is of
course just talking in jest.
She has no doubt as to my identity as being different to that of
our Steve/SB.

best wishes,
Victoria/Steve /SB
I may be the one confused now ..from all this crazy talk.

[Stephen Thomas]

Sorry, I couldnt resist

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kvs4bOMv5Xw

[caz]

I'm relieved that you are apparently still at liberty and all the threats of criminal prosecution made by Steve on the trail thread all came to naught.

Blimey, Livia, I don't remember any of that! Presumably because I would have had no possible reason to take him seriously.

I think the poster formerly known as 'Steve' bought his one-way ticket out of here when he finally made one too many unsupported allegations about people unable to defend themselves. Posters caught using two user names are not generally allowed to drop one and carry on with t'other as if nothing happened. So I'd still be a bit cautious on that front.

Love,

Caz
X

[Livia]

Hi Livia,

I believe one is supposed to report such suspicions rather than voice them on the boards, to avoid the risk of accusing the innocent. So a poster could be suspected by pretty much everyone of using more than one user name, right from the start (which is against the rules but can't always be proved, eg if different IP addresses are used), and it could appear to you like we were all born yesterday.

Now 'Victoria' is on his/her own, while Steve is unable to post as 'Steve', the situation is slightly different, because there's only one user name involved and posters don't need to supply their real names. 'Victoria' actually signed a couple of his/her recent posts 'Steve' or 'SB' (Stevie Baby), which may or may not have been in jest. I would say this leaves us free to refer to him/her as either from now on.

Love,

Caz
X

Hi Caz,

When I made that comment, I was reading this thread and page 59 of the "trail of the forgers" thread, and towards the end of the trail thread (about fifteen pages later) it became apparent that others suspected a dual membership too. With that, and the comments on this thread and Steve's subsequent banning, it appeared that the issue had been resolved. But thanks for the heads up.

I'm relieved that you are apparently still at liberty and all the threats of criminal prosecution made by Steve on the trail thread all came to naught.

Best regards,

Livia

[caz]

Hi GM,

I see what you're saying, and to some extent I agree. As I said initially, I feel there is a certain charm about the writing (purely in a creative sense), and maybe as a teenager there was a potential there that just wasn't nurtured or encouraged in the right ways - and I don't just mean his poor language skills.

When it comes to dialogue his imagination really lets rip (he couldn't possibly remember what was actually said, for example, during conversations from the dim and distant 1970s) but none of it sounds real. I know none of it is real, but even in fictional dialogue it should come across as the kind of conversations real people have all the time about real situations.

Even when the characters are engaged in small talk, and not talking bollocks about a world-rocking hush-hush diary conspiracy (laughingly over the top stuff, which the author must find plausible, to imagine that his readers will), they are saying things to each other that nobody ever says in real life.

Chapter 11 - 100% tripe.

The 'photo corners' gave me real fits. Steve has quite clearly never seen inside that diary. But maybe it's time to stop laughing. The man needs help.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

I spent the better part of yesterday reading the thread "On the trail of the forgers" and wondered why no one suspected this sooner.

Hi Livia,

I believe one is supposed to report such suspicions rather than voice them on the boards, to avoid the risk of accusing the innocent. So a poster could be suspected by pretty much everyone of using more than one user name, right from the start (which is against the rules but can't always be proved, eg if different IP addresses are used), and it could appear to you like we were all born yesterday.

Now 'Victoria' is on his/her own, while Steve is unable to post as 'Steve', the situation is slightly different, because there's only one user name involved and posters don't need to supply their real names. 'Victoria' actually signed a couple of his/her recent posts 'Steve' or 'SB' (Stevie Baby), which may or may not have been in jest. I would say this leaves us free to refer to him/her as either from now on.

Love,

Caz
X

[The Grave Maurice]

Caz,

When I was reading the book I would have agreed with much of what you say. But I noticed that while, as a rule, I can't remember anything about a minor JtR book a couple of days after I've read it, many of the details in this one somehow stuck with me. Steve has a sort of rhythm to his writing that is difficult to ignore. Admittedly, the book is more like a first draft that a finished first edition, but I think it shows a reasonable amount of talent. I found it to be much better than books of the same ilk, say, for example, Chris Miles' On the Trail of a Dead Man which, I realize, is pretty much damning with faint praise.

[Livia]

Victoria is Steve for those hadn't noticed.

I spent the better part of yesterday reading the thread "On the trail of the forgers" and wondered why no one suspected this sooner.

[caz]

Hi GM,

I only read chapter 10 last night and the cat sensibly kept well away.

SB is right off the scale now. I don't think I've ever read such a piece of pure unadulterated shite.

It reads like a ten year-old trying desperately to glue together all the bits of rubbish he has come out with on these boards about Feldman going down under in the 1970s and ending up with a recycled account that, like an ill-fitting wig, doesn't look real, isn't real and could only fool an old fool - or possibly a five year-old.

When SB described Feldy as 'tall' on the boards, everyone laughed - again. So in the book Feldy has become a sarcastic 'tall' to get round this small problem. Only trouble is, his voice is described by SB, without a hint of sarcasm, humour or wit, as 'educated'. Well call me an old-fashioned snob, but in the mid-1970s Feldy would have been in his early twenties and one's voice doesn't tend to go from 'educated' to 'Del Boy' by one's fifties, which was when I met the man.

I don't know, maybe Del Boy would have sounded 'educated' to simple Strine ears back in Mott the Hoople times, but nothing about that dialogue between SB and Feldy sounds real, was real, or could possibly have been real.

It's the stuff of very poor primary school creative writing.

I was going to liken it to a Monty Python sketch with all the wit and fun sucked out of it. But that would have left only blank pages.

If only.

Love,

Caz
X

[caz]

You wrote,

"What was stopping SB writing and recording a song about it,
that would instantly expose his mate's funny little game if he ever tried
to sell the diary as the real thing."

I totally agree with you .. there would be no criticism then, as
that is what he does best.
And the same as when you photograph something in front of a current
newspaper .. it would be some sort of proof.
I am sure he is kicking himself now, for not thinking about it.

love,

SB

Not really, SB. (Btw, I see you managed to find a foolproof way round your ban. Well done.)

Current newspapers are only current for a day.

But all you had to do was set the words to music and record yourself singing it back in the gary glittery 1970s and you'd have scored a direct hit when anyone tried to flog the offending article in the blurry oasis of the 1990s. Best hit you could ever have written for yourself.

Ah well, maybe you were destined for a life of missed opportunities.

Love,

Caz
X