Confessions of a sock puppet

I’m not the slightest bit interested in podcasts, I’ve never read a book by Russell Hoban, and I only pretended to have the email addresses of people like Toby Young and Dave Dobbyn so I could interview Pippa Wetzell. OK?

I am a sock puppet. I used Chris Bell as a pseudonym to disguise my true identity. I actually go by the name McTavish of Banffshire, and I’m a West Highland White Terrier (dog shown not actual size).

The good news for you poor duped bastards is that NZBC’s Director-General — a man I consider myself lucky to call “The DG” — has agreed to back me up, on the basis that I’m “brave” and “brilliant”. At least that’s what I think he said at the Coco Club; by then, the music was loud and the cocktail of rohypnol and ketamine I’d dropped in his Lion Red had started to kick in.

Those of you who read my blog posts under the impression that they might be true are to be offered a full refund. The DG recognises you may have been disappointed by my baloney. I know he is. There is a catch: only those readers who visited NZBC before today — the date on which I admitted the full extent of my deceit — will be eligible for the refund. And the DG will want to see hard evidence.

NZBC readers must send us their IP address as well as all photographs of Scarlett Johansson from their temporary internet folders. Readers who have visited this blog from outside of New Zealand (hereinafter referred to as “The World”), must courier a working, flat-screen computer monitor, along with the valid till receipt, to NZBC head office immediately (there’s no need to send us any cables, thanks).

In the meantime, watch out for the soon-to-be-impending relaunch of my website, a site which, according to the Boston Globe, contains “the most lacerating collection of short stories since Darby Larson”. The DG has described my stories as “uncommonly genuine”, which is weird because I made them all up, too.

It’s funny, you know, but at a certain time of the evening, in certain bars, when the light gets low, the DG looks a lot like Oprah Winfrey.

Adios, suckers.