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I started writing an article last week. It was going to be a good one. Somebody was going to get a thoroughly deserved slagging off. I don’t write many of those kind of pieces these days, so it was high time I really put somebody in their place.

Just to be sure, I did a little research first, in order to check I wasn’t being an idiot. And it fairly quickly became clear that while I did have some semblance of a point… so did they. The issue was rather more complex than it first appeared. In the end, I abandoned the piece entirely; the research needed to make it worth publishing was best spent on other things, although I might return to the topic at some point.

Which is fine. I’m not expecting any medals for a basic level of truthfulness and competence. Still, it seems a lesson worth noting publicly. If you never find yourself abandoning a position because it was fundamentally misguided, then you’re probably doing something wrong.

If you’re confident that your gut instinct and personal ideologies are always correct… they probably aren’t, you know.

*   *   *

One of the other blogs I follow has just posted something titled “Believing in Yourself”.

I never was very good at inspirational writing.

Paul Hayes, “Mopping Up… Or Moping Up…?”:

“Am I just a worthless parasite, leeching off other people’s creativity?

It’s a paranoia which does seize me, sometimes. Not often; not all the time. But last night, watching last night’s very enjoyable return of Doctor Who, I was at one point towards the end overcome with that melancholy feeling of knowing I could never, ever do this. I could never do what Russell T Davies does. […]

But that worry does take hold of me, every now and then. I’m so proud of writing books and articles about this show, making radio pieces about it. Proud that I can be a tiny little part of it in my professional life, be engaged with it and share that engagement. But is it all just worthless? Would I not be better off trying to create and do something of my own? Am I just a laughable figure, building so much of my life around something to which I have made absolutely no contribution whatsoever, and have never had anything to do with?”

The answer, of course, is that Paul Hayes is the very opposite of either a worthless parasite or a laughable figure, having done incredible work when it comes to documenting Doctor Who. But this is obvious, and Paul knows it. The rest of his blog post is a brilliant analysis of exactly why researching and documenting a show is a worthwhile thing to do, and I highly recommend you read it.

And yet… I know exactly what he means. And I think most people who make things about other people’s work feel like this at times. You can logically know that what you do is worthwhile, can fully defend someone else from worries like these… and yet still feel that troublesome pang when it comes to yourself. Not all the the time. Just occasionally.

If I’m brutally honest, I sometimes have slightly darker worries about myself: that my writing is about trying to have control over the shows I loved as a kid. I’m very proud of this piece on Knightmare; it was everything I had floating around in my head for years, and managed to write about at a level which I don’t always manage. It’s one of the very best things I’ve ever done. But there is definitely a certain amount of trying to control and compartmentalise my feelings about the show. And perhaps, a little of trying to own a part of it.

Even as I write that latter remark, it seems a foolish thing to accuse myself of. Why can’t writing things like that simply be a positive thing? Why does my brain attempt to turn it into something unpleasant? But these are the cynical things you worry about, when you spend a long time writing about other people’s work, and not making anything which stands on its own.

Because sometimes, I wonder what might have happened. If I hadn’t had the confidence kicked out of me at secondary school. A time when I showed vague hints of promise in drama class… only to be stamped down on. If only I could have been one of those people who managed to stop bullies by “making them laugh”. The kind of thing you read about in interviews with very, very funny people. The Platonic Ideal of how to deal with that kind of nonsense.

I couldn’t do it. I reacted by shrinking in on myself instead.

None of which, in 2024, is especially useful. But it’s something I’m pondering at the back of my head. For many reasons, I haven’t had the best start to the year. I think I may need some kind of outlet for creativity which isn’t just writing about other people’s creativity. Exactly what, I don’t know, beyond a few stray thoughts. And if those stray thoughts cohere into something bigger, it won’t be anything I’d put in public for a very long time, if ever.

But I think I might need something.

I can’t remember how old I was. I was at secondary school, I know that. But I mainly just remember the dead badger.

It’s lying at the side of the road. Absolutely still. No blood, or at least not that I could see, although I didn’t investigate it too closely. I might be a teenage boy, but I’m not that kind of teenage boy. Death is safer in books.

But it sticks in my mind. When I get back home, I tell my family what I saw. And it’s that lack of blood which captured my imagination. That badger looked normal, just deathly still. It could almost have been alive… except, it wasn’t.

*   *   *

Hacker News comments, Terence Eden:

“The best thing about the Dirty Feed blog is that it shows just how fragile history is.

We’re talking about stuff that happened in the last few decades – and yet people’s recollections are faulty, the documentation is inconsistent, and the contemporary commentary is already wrong.

Now extrapolate that back a hundred years. What conventionally accepted history is wrong? What cause and effects have been mixed up?

Popular culture isn’t always well researched – and John shows just how difficult it is.”

*   *   *

It’s what, a few months on from the dead badger? I can’t remember. Whenever it was, it was a short enough amount of time for my family to remember me telling the story the first time round.

But I’m telling it again. And this time, I get a bit carried away. I talk about the blood. I’m in full flow, in fact. Describing the blood and gore which never, in fact, existed.

And my sister stops me. She’s mildly irritated. Hang on, I said there wasn’t any blood last time, that it was the stillness which really struck me. It was that which was interesting about the story. What’s changed? Why the blood and gore?

I can’t remember my reply. I have a nasty feeling I mumbled something about a “different badger”. But I was caught in a lie, and everyone knew it.

*   *   *

People lie for many different reasons. They can lie to get evil deeds done. They can lie to big up their tiny role in something important. They can lie because examining the truth is too difficult. They can lie because the truth is just fucking awful, and it’s far easier to just tell everyone what they wish had happened.

But people also lie for more prosaic reasons. They can lie because without the lie, there would be an awkward gap in the conversation.¹ They can lie because right at that moment, the real story doesn’t appear in their head, so they leap to the end with the story which “should” have happened. They lie because they’ve forgotten the details, and it’s embarrassing, and they should know this, so it probably happened this way, right?

(Is it mean to call these kind of things a “lie”? Maybe it is. But if people aren’t careful enough with the truth, then it really does become a matter of splitting hairs, no matter what the reason. Especially if someone keeps repeating it.)

These things get silly. I would have gained zero social capital from lying about that badger, even if I’d got away from it. My tongue simply ran away with itself, and my brain accidentally told the wrong story. The one which might have happened, which does happen to badgers on a daily basis… but in this case, didn’t.

And this is what I think is what usually happens when I’m trying to figure out the truth about the things I write here. I’m sure in some rare cases, there are people acting entirely in bad faith, who are deliberately lying for deeply unpleasant reasons. But I think the majority of lies are the prosaic ones. When unpicking the falsehoods in my Young Ones flash frames pieces, do I really think Paul Jackson was deliberately trying to trick us all with the idea that the “Summer Holiday” flash frame was present on VHS and DVD releases? Of course not. His brain simply leapt ahead and accidentally filled in the gap incorrectly.

But crucially: the effect is often the same. A deliberate lie, or a prosaic one: both have the same effect on the story. To warp it. Sometimes irreparably, if you can’t find out what really happened from elsewhere.

I’m not stupid. Dirty Feed will have all kinds of falsehoods on it. With some of them, I’m merely reporting other people unchallenged; elsewhere will be things I have made up entirely off my own back. But it’s important to at least try and get this stuff right, even when you’re not writing about an important news story. Even when it’s the silliest piece of pop culture nonsense in the world. And I could give you a long, pretentious, deep explanation why. But the real reason is: the truth is usually more interesting.

The stillness of the badger? Beats a bucket of blood any day.

1. Or podcast. Or DVD commentary. ↩