Sincerest Form of Twattery

Kevin Leam: Liar, Con-Artist and Prick

2009-02-18T13:05:00.000-08:00

This is a website about Kevin Leam, aka 'Sarc' or 'Lunacy Phrynge', a serial plagiarist, habitual liar, and total prick.

(Google suggests there is only one Kevin Leam in the world, but in the event of there being more than one - in name at least, for in character there is surely only one such loathsome mutant freak in the world - the biographical data and pictures in
the original article will establish which one is being referred to.)

In April 2007 Michael Kelly, a net-based humorist, author of the 'Ulrich Haarburste' Orbison in Clingfilm stories and so on and a published writer, discovered that for the past four years Kevin Leam had been systematically plagiarising him and several other net writers in blogs on myspace and easyjournal: copying and pasting countless dozens of articles wholesale and claiming to have written them himself. Leam would link to this plagiarised writing from his profile on various dating sites, claiming they were his own works, in an attempt to impress girls. As a result of this he struck up more than one intimate correspondence with a woman who believed he was a skilled and prolific writer, and enjoyed a growing reputation as a wit on myspace. He also claimed to have done stand-up, appeared in a film and on television, and to be in a successful band, by the expedient of copying articles written by people who had actually done these things and inserting his own name in them. He is a sad and eminently laughable but completely vile individual.

Mr. Kelly placed an article detailing these thefts and lamenting Leam's vileness on his website. Via an intermediary he contacted Kevin Leam and requested that he delete the stolen articles, place an admission and apology on his blogs and pay a modest sum to charity to reflect the value of the stolen work. Information on his actions was circulated to those on his myspace friends list. Leam responded with abuse and denials, claiming variously that Mr. Kelly (presumably in collusion with the half dozen other writers and rock band he had also stolen from) had in fact copied his work, despite the fact that the evidence of the internet archive clearly showed this to be a lie; or, bizarrely, that Kelly was an editor who had asked Leam to write for him, and when he had declined to do so had hatched a complicated and far-flung conspiracy to discredit him out of pique.

Needless to say no-one above a certain IQ believed him. Due to the need to discourage this kind of activity and protect copyright on the internet, and the non-response of the web hosts in question to requests to delete the infringing material, Mr. Kelly felt unable to let the matter drop there. Thanks to the mediation of a despairing acquaintance of Leam's he was finally persuaded to at least remove the thefts from his myspace blog. However this was accompanied by further abuse of and lies about Mr. Kelly.

It was suggested to Mr. Kelly by people who knew Kevin Leam that he was more to be pitied than despised; that anyone who knew him at all would be unlikely to believe his claims to authorship or indeed much of anything else he said; that he had various problems, poor child. Despite testimony from other people who knew Leam that he was just scum, and the evidence that people who didn't know him were being completely taken in by him, Mr. Kelly was eventually worn down by this bleeding-heart nonsense. Partly out of misplaced pity, or at least a desire not to be thought needlessly vindictive towards a vanquished and possibly subhuman opponent, and partly out of extreme aesthetic revulsion and a desire never again to be reminded of the squalid and sleazy existence of Kevin Leam, and partly due to a reluctance to embark on costly, uncertain and time-wasting litigation, Mr. Kelly decided not to take further action against Leam for the time being, as unsatisfactory as this was. However he left the page detailing the plagiarisms on his website, both to warn people against Kevin Leam and in the hope that he would eventually see reason and make an admission, apology and settlement.

Mr. Kelly was mistaken. Even a cornered rat can bite; the scum mentality sees mercy as weakness; as the current state of British society should have showed him, when excuses are made for bad people, when they are indulged and coddled and pitied and protected from the consequences of their behaviour, nice people suffer. And as Mr Kelly's years as a ringer in the Over-60s Cage-Fighting League should have taught him, you should only stop stomping on your opponents when they are comatose, not when they squeal or whimper or wet themselves or their artificial limbs fall off.

Eighteen months later in February 2009 Mr. Kelly received a communication from the ridiculously-named company 'Orange', owners of his Freeserve website, informing him that a complaint had been received with regard to the webpage listing and proving Kevin Leam's thefts, and that unless this was deleted within three days Mr. Kelly's entire website would be removed. Bizarrely, they refused to say which specific material on the page was objected to or why; when pressed, they said the page had breached the Terms of Service, but declined to say which one. They stipulated that, for all they knew, the page might be both truthful and legal - which it is, as truth cannot be defamation, and the facts stated on the page were backed up with screenshots and links to independent sources - but have so far refused to investigate further.

Mr. Kelly withdrew the page in question before the deadline while attempting to reason with Orange-Freeserve. However he had put a note on the homepage describing the situation and mentioning the plagiarist Kevin Leam. This too was held to be in breach of the Terms of Service - again, Orange refused to say which one - and despite the fact that no notification or warning had been made of this, Mr. Kelly's entire website, 'Michael Kelly's Page of Misery' was deleted, and at the time of writing remains so. Although it is to be hoped that Orange can be made to see reason, as of now a website containing ten years' work, which has given pleasure to countless thousands of people worldwide and is quite important to the sales of Mr. Kelly's books, has been summarily erased overnight on the unverified word of an apparently pathological liar and living piece of shit. It is strange.

Now that he no longer has a website Mr. Kelly's natural inclination is to walk away from the net entirely. His occasional killing sprees aside, he is an essentially gentle man who wants contact only with beautiful and pleasing things. However, there seems a chance that the net may unfortunately soon be all there is, which means it cannot be abandoned to fuck-ups like Kevin Leam.

Therefore, linked below is a reproduction of Mr. Kelly's original article on Leam. All facts were correct as of April 2007. It is mirrored elsewhere. This will work like a hydra. If any attempt is made to censor the information on this blog, it will be duplicated on two new sites, and the same will apply to them. This is an automatic process manned by kindly volunteers and Mr. Kelly's pretty little head will not even be troubled by it.

Further down is an update on Kevin Leam's activities and below that some jokes Mr. Kelly has thought of. He will write more of them every time he is reminded of Leam's loathsome existence.

(Update: Mr. Kelly's new website is or will be
here - for the time being it remains a skeleton.)

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Click here to read the original article on Leam

===

Kevin Leam Update!

2009-02-17T12:38:00.000-08:00

What is Kevin Leam doing now, less than two years after the article above? Eighteen months after getting caught, eighteen months after narrowly avoiding legal action, eighteen months after lying like a frantic rat-bastard about it to everyone he thought was gullible enough to believe him - how does he fare, what does he do with himself, this strange and remarkable man? Has he learned his lesson, has he mended his ways, does he devote his time to pious works? Does he give thanks to providence for his undeserved escape? What, what, what exactly is Kevin Leam doing right now, at the same time that he is somehow getting his good friends at Orange to yank my website for calling him a plagiarist?

Why, he is plagiarising, of course! You can't keep a good copy-and-paste man down.

This is the latest but one entry on his myspace blog, http://blogs.myspace.com/silentdogma, '53 Things I Am No Longer Allowed To Do.'

Note the cute intro implying these are things he's done, the zany fool. Note however that this, too, is plagiarised. Note the full complement of Americanisms. Actually this piece is something that's gone round the net like Chinese whispers, being added to and subtracted from. I doubt he's even done that, but I can't find the version he's copied. The original is here:

http://skippyslist.com/list/

This is his entry for July 3rd 2008:

It was copied from a poster named 'davywavy'
on the b3ta.com questions forums:

http://www.b3ta.com/questions/unexplained/page2/

And... oh, screw it, life's too short.

=

[What am I whining about? See
here]

Easyjournal Highlights

2009-02-17T10:58:00.000-08:00

Via the internet archive I've been able to capture some bits of Kevin Leam's locked-off easyjournal account for posterity. I hadn't seen some of these before and have found them richly entertaining. Here are a few highlights.

Leam Comes Clean Shocker!

First up, a real surprise: Kevin Leam admitting to and apologising for a theft! Just the one, however, and he still claims to have written everything else he had stolen. It turns out he got caught once before, although no-one suspected and nor did he admit to the vast scale of the deception:

'26.8.2003 Apologies

I've been collared, I'm afraid my last entry wasnt the result of my brain going into overdrivae again, i have infact nicked it from somewhere but i cant remember where. I apologise but i couldnt think of anything funny to write about that time but i adsure you i promise never to nick any more gags ever again, i feel cheap and ashamed and i hop you all find it in your warped little minds to forgive me for my booboo.' [All illiteracies, sic.]

Needless to say, not just the preceding entry but all of the preceding entries, and all of the following entries, were stolen. The only bits on the journal he did write were little intros where he says things like 'im back funnier than ever rock and rolllllll!!!!'

The prick.

Sick

This one I found really bizarre and, well, sick. Kevin Leam pretends to have been sick. But it was Steve Hofstetter who had been sick.

http://www.collegehumor.com/school:53/articles/2003/11

Leam: the German TV Years

I've been having great fun comparing and contrasting Leam pretending to be a struggling actor with Steve Hofstetter's true account of being a struggling actor which he copied and slightly adapted:

http://www.stevehofstetter.com/column.cfm?ID=98

(The above is a link to the web archive as I can't get the Hofstetter column to load: perhaps he has collected it in a book now.)

The first difference is Leam's intro. He has just moved to Nottingham from Grimsby to follow his dreams:

'Well here it is my f**kers, the first official update of a newly relocated wannabe partime comedian/musician.

Being in the business I'm in deciding to move and live in Nottingham was a pretty smart move...'

However he laments: 'The musicians I've met have been pretty damn cool, the actors on the other hand, well, read on.

I have met a lot of people who say that they're actors. But the only acting they're doing is pretending to be an actor.'

It was actually Hofstetter who wrote the second line. But how could Leam even dare to copy it without blushing?

But forget that, forget that. Here's Hofstetter on being an extra:

'This weekend, I shot two scenes in "Synergy," a forthcoming movie from Universal that stars Dennis Quaid along with a very well cast red-headed blurry thing in the background. I, with the 200 other people getting paid virtually nothing, was an extra. I was furniture with a mouth. This was not my big break.'

Leam dimly realises that people won't wear the idea of a Dennis Quaid movie having been filmed in Nottingham. They would have noticed it. So he has to change it. Disappointingly his invention fails him a bit at the start. It becomes 'a new indie film (its so new the script hasn't even been finished and there's not even a name)'. But then he rallies: it stars 'various failed soap actors and childrens television presenters' and him in the background.

Later on, Hofstetter's anecdote about three extras being chosen 'to be in direct line of the camera, just over Dennis Quaid's shoulder' becomes in Leam's hands 'in direct line of the camera, just over the guy who plays Eric Pollard in Emmerdale Farm's shoulder.'

But forget that, forget that. Here is the bit I love:

The Hofstetter original:

'I was also on an episode of Ricki Lake, during which I was paid to make fun of people.'

Transmuted by Leam's genius this becomes:

'I was also on an episode of of a Trisha like show in Germany back in 99, during which I and other band mates at the time where paid to make fun of people.'

A Trisha-like show in Germany, featuring a band who make fun of people. The mind. It boggles.

(It's like the kind of impromptu lie a five-year old might come up with in the schoolyard. 'I was on a TV show.' 'Oh really, which one?' 'Um... one in Germany. You won't have heard of it.')

Leam, like Hofstetter, continues:

'The only role I ever play is myself.'

Indeed. And Steve Hofstetter, and me, and...

But forget that, forget that. Here is my favourite bit, here is where this changed from being a disgusting, demeaning chore to something I would pay to do for my personal entertainment.

Two Nations United by a Common Language

OK. Leam pretending to be Hofstetter working as an extra describes 'a crowd scene at night in front of Nottingham city hall'.

But then he simply can't be bothered changing any more. He's worn out with all the copying and pasting. So observe the Nottingham accent on his fellow actors:

'When the staff brought out some food, one woman pushed her way up to the front of the line and started filling her plate with as much food as she could grab. A gentleman smiled at her and said, "hungry, huh?" The woman snapped at him, while still taking more food.

"Look, we all hungry," she said. "I hungry, you hungry. Don't say you ain't hungry. I just being real. Don't fake the funk. You gotsa be real."'

I could go on pointing out similar all night. Leam really doesn't see any incongruity in transposing American language, attitudes and social scenarios into provincial England. Another couple of favourites in this line:

Leam's entry for 29.3.2004, 'Vangellis' Arch Enemy', also stolen from Hofstetter but dating from Leam's Grimsby years. In Hofstetter's
original, there is a reference to 'the corner of 65th and Queens Boulevard'. Translated by Leam this becomes, splendidly, 'the corner of Westward Ho and Bargate'.

Or the entry 'Love love hate hate which side now?' stolen from JD Rebello:

http://www.pointsincase.com/columns/justin/1-4-04.htm

http://web.archive.org/web/20050308172235/silentdogma.easyjournal.com/entry.aspx?eid=2036780

Contains, among other delights:

'Any white guy who wears a bandana, says "'sup" like a Puerto Rican, rocks bling, and calls his friends his "niggaz" deserves to be disemboweled with chopsticks.'

There is of course a large Puerto Rican community in Grimsby. This apparently annoys Leam because he continues:

'Hey, Enrique, stay away from our women. It's bad enough you took my job, ruined the suburb, and f**ked up the economy, now you gonna take my white girls. I'm gonna require that girls start wearing INS jackets to bars and clubs, just to avoid this.'

===
What is this about?
===

Some Kevin Leam Jokes

2009-02-17T10:50:00.000-08:00

Q. What's the difference between Kevin Leam and a bucket of shit?
A. One is a receptacle full of excrement, the other is a plagiarist and liar. If you can't tell the difference I wouldn't send you to deliver a restraining order.

Q. How can you tell when Kevin Leam is lying?
A. He's breathing.

Q. What's the similarity between the Pamplona festival and a visit from Kevin Leam?
A. The amount of bullshit you have to clear up afterwards.

Q. What's Kevin Leam's favourite song?
A. 'The Boxer' by Simon and Garfunkel. Because of the chorus that goes:

'Lie-l-lie
Lie lie lie lie lie lie lie
Lie-l-lie
Lie lie lie lie lie lie lie
L-l-l-Lie.'

He thinks it is good advice for anyone.

Q. What's Kevin Leam's second favourite song?
A. 'Liar' by the Sex Pistols

Q. What's Kevin Leam's third favourite song?
A. 'Orville's Song' by Keith Harris and Orville. It just is. He likes to tell people that Orville is a close personal friend of his.

Q. Why couldn't Kevin Leam fill in the job application form?
A. One of the questions began 'In your own words...'
So he just told everyone he'd got a better job, as an astronaut.
He did this by copying extracts from the autiobiography of John Glenn but inserting his own name. In the parts when John Glenn became the Senator for Ohio, he cleverly replaced 'Ohio' with 'Nottingham'.

Q. What did Kevin Leam say when he shit the bed?
A. It wasn't me, it was the bed-shit fairy.

Q. What do you get if you cross Kevin Leam with a rhino?
A. God knows, but it'd be worth it to see him being fucked by a rhino.

Q. What did the shark say to Kevin Leam when he fell in the sea?
A. Nothing, it just chewed his fucking face off.

Q. Why did Kevin Leam cross the road?
A. To buy a new computer mouse, because he'd worn out the right-click on the old one with copying and pasting. He was run over halfway across and had to hop around everywhere like a bunny for the rest of his life.

-Knock knock.
-Who's there?
-Kevin Leam.
-Kevin Leam who?
-Kevin Leam the renowned writer, pop star, stand-up comic, film actor and inventor of penicillin.
-Oh.

Q. What's worse than biting into an apple and finding a worm?
A. Waking up in the morning as Kevin Leam.

Q. What's worse than waking up in the morning as Kevin Leam?
A. Waking up in the morning next to Kevin Leam.

Q. What's worse than waking up in the morning next to Kevin Leam?
A. Waking up in the morning next to half a Kevin Leam. Like if he had split himself in two or something, and one half was glutinously adhering to the ceiling, dripping nameless ooze, grinning down at you weirdly and telling you about the time he was in the SAS.

Q. How many Kevin Leams does it take to change a light bulb?
A. None. He lies in bed and lets his Mum do it. Then when his Dad comes home he goes, 'Look, Dad, I changed the light bulb, aren't I great?' Then his Mum says, 'Ooh, you never, I did it!' Then Kevin Leam says, 'You lying whore! It was me, me, it was all my work! Don't believe her evil lies.' Then his Mum says, 'I can prove it, a dozen people saw me do it, and one of them video-taped me doing it, because we don't have much else to do around here.' Then Kevin screams, 'Lies! Lies! They're all against me! It's a conspiracy! Who are you going to believe, me or your own eyes?' Then his Mum says, quite patiently, that in point of fact he is the liar and he should go to his room and think about what he did. But he continues to rant, and then someone advises his Mum to leave it, because the boy has problems, bless him. So his Mum ill-advisedly leaves it. Two years later when everyone has forgotten about the whole thing he tries to do her for defamation.

==

What is this about?

An IQ test

2009-02-17T10:09:00.000-08:00

1. You are semi-literate at best. What's the best way to plausibly con people that you are someone you aren't?

A. Pretend you are the last true heir of the Romanovs?
B. Tell people you used to be in Chumbawamba. You are in fact the forgotten 37th Chumbawamban who was ruthlessly sacked just before they became famous. You used to stand on stage and beat two sticks together, but when they went on Top of the Pops only 36 of them could squeeze into the van or cling on top of it, and, in spite of their Marxist aim of providing employment for every musician in the North of England, you had to be left out.
C. Put your name on articles by witty, urbane, erudite writers who, unlike you, are able to punctuate and spell, and hope no-one will find this strange? And claim to be in a band, have done stand-up, appeared in films, been to the moon, etcetera.

2. Assuming that you have decided to big yourself up by plagiarising other people's writing, who is it most sensible to steal from?

A) Dead and obscure writers?
B) Rich famous writers?
C) Internet humorists, almost by definition twisted and hate-filled men with too much time on their hands, who could make you a laughing stock in countries you've never even heard of?

3. You are caught doing this. How do you respond?

A) Man up and take your punishment. Apologise to the people you deceived and stole from and finally start to grow up and live your life right?

B) Weasel your way out of it, think you've had a lucky escape and resolve never to play with fire again?

C) Lie like a government minister to everyone around you, carry on plagiarising as though nothing had happened, and eighteen months later do something to annoy a bitter and hate-filled internet humorist even worse, going on to poke a sleeping bear and stick your hand in a wasps' nest for an encore?

4. Which of the following statements do you agree with?

A) Truth is objective and the cornerstone of a civilised society and any meaningful human interaction.
B) It is difficult to suppress information on the internet.
C) I am the centre of all things and external reality is subject to my will. People can be indefinitely lied to or cajoled, pouted, guilted, whimpered and whined into pretending to accept my version of reality and my unethical behaviour because they feel sorry for me, and will not one day snap and tell me what a loathsome and childish shit I am. Any hurt or damage I cause to other people is supremely irrelevant so long as I am never brought to account or forced to face myself. There's a sucker born every minute and you can fool most of the people most of the time. I really should go into politics one of these days.
Or alternatively:
Hurrrrr! Heeeee! Nurrrrrr! Guhhhhh. Lie! Me lie! Me trick the ladies so they will like me! Hurrrrrr.
Is funny. Me is CLEVERRR. Hee! Me like to lie. Nnnnnng. Buh.

Results:

If you answered C's YOU ARE COMPLETELY LEAM.

(I wonder if it would be possible to persuade young people to start saying 'That's so Leam' instead of 'That's so Lame'? I am not sure. Whenever teenagers see me coming they tend to move away quickly, especially the girls. This makes me sad.)

==

What is this about?

An Orange Joke

2009-02-17T10:08:00.001-08:00

Q. Have you heard the one about the company who sponsors a prestigious Prize for writing, but summarily deleted a writer's website in order to protect a plagiarist?

A. Yes, their name is Orange.

It isn't funny. But it is ironic.

ps. Oh and isn't their prize for women's fiction anyway?
Yet apparently it's OK by them to tell semi-psychotic lies to women in order to pull them, and they won't allow you to say anything hurtful, or indeed truthful, about people who do.

Maybe the prize is for 'Fiction Aimed At Women.' Kevin Leam should enter.

Main

Leam's film found!

2009-02-17T10:07:00.002-08:00

I may have done Leam an injustice. I was disparaging of his claim to have acted in a crowd scene in front of Nottingham City Hall along with 'soap actors and children's television presenters' and a cast of hundreds. Cineaste friends have pointed out that the untitled, unscripted project must certainly have turned out to be the indie cult favourite 'The Beasts That Ate Nottingham City Hall.' Here are some publicity shots and screencaps I've unearthed.

At left, leading man 'the guy who plays Eric Pollard in Emmerdale Farm.' At right, Katy Hill out of Blue Peter. She is a warrior space princess who has travelled many light years to warn Nottingham of the advent of the hungry monsters.

Moreover, it turns out Leam was actually being unwontedly modest in claiming he was only a face in the crowd. In fact, as this shot shows, he plays some kind of awful living turd who is shit out by one of the beasts.

Fortunately Nicola Charles out of Neighbours destroys the Leam-turd creature with a flamethrower. I think she is a space princess too. It's possible that if I could photoshop properly I would leave the house even less than I already do.

[What is this? See here]

More on the German TV Years!

2009-02-17T10:07:00.001-08:00

I have managed to track down Kevin Leam's notorious appearance on German TV (see
here.) It was, you will recall, 'a Trisha-like' show in which he 'and other band mates at the time were paid to make fun of people'.

This is a still from an episode of 'Strength Through Truth with Helga Schlüsselbein', the German Trisha.

At the left are guests Hermann and Ottoline. They have confessed frankly that their marriage may be irretrievably broken down because Hermann prefers to file their tax records alphabetically while Ottoline likes to do so by serial number. Things have reached such a pass that in the course of the show Ottoline has hysterically accused Hermann of also being inefficient in the use of garage space while Hermann has cruelly reminded her of the day in 1983 when he came home to find an out of date Mayonnaise jar in the cupboard.

Sneaking up behind them are Kevin Leam's band, who have been hired to make fun of the heart-baring guests. Leam was in a supergroup with Eric Clapton, Paul McCartney, zombie Jimi Hendrix and zombie Keith Moon. The scamps are about to tip a bucket of rotting herrings over the unsuspecting couple. The marriage will not survive but the ratings are sensational. This clip is replayed in Germany every Christmas. Well, you would.

[What is this about?]

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Another Leam work found

2009-02-17T10:06:00.003-08:00

I have unearthed another early comedy gem by Kevin Leam. I don't know how he does it! The man is just a funny machine.

---

hi guys and gals reddy for another uypdate??/
well as an up andcomming standup comic, rock star and formuler one rasing driver i get into som wacky scraopes i kid you not folks!!!!
its tough on the circuit at times, dont beleve me? read on....

I did something brave once, I think. I played in a Mafia club, in ~~Youngstown, Ohio~~ Ashby De La Zouch. And I didn't know shit about the Mafia. And we worked, and they wasn't going to pay us.

I worked with a lady named Satin Doll, I think ~~Duke Ellington~~ the Duke of Windsor had written a tune about her, she was beautiful, man, she was sixty then, but she was fine.

And she was crying, '~~Rich~~ Kev, I don't have any money, I've got to get to ~~Buffalo~~ Ipswich, they're not gonna pay us.'

I said, 'They're not gonna pay who? Motherfuckers gonna pay me! I know I was raised better than that shit.'

And I had a blank pistol, now dig how ignorant I was. I was nineteen, man, I didn't know, I had a blank cap pistol. I bust in the office:

'You motherfuckers get out your money!' Doing my best ~~black~~ Grimsby shit. 'Cause that usually scare the average ~~white motherfucker~~ person from outside Grimsby.

You know how it is when you do something, and the motherfucker just don't... you can feel there's something wrong? And you got the gun? And you're saying, 'There's something wrong... There's some look missing in this motherfucker's face.'

And I'm sure that them men are still there today, laughing. 'Cause they started laughing, they just looked and went 'Haaaaaaaarrrrrr! This fuckin' kid! Hey, c'mere, c'mere... Hey Tony! Wait a minute, come here... Do it again, ~~Rich~~ Kev... Hey Tony! Stick-up! Haaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrr! You fuckin' kid! He's got a pair of fangoozis on him, haaaa, you fuckin' kid! Haaaaaaaaaa! Hey Tony, was you scared? Haaaaaaaarrrrr! Ah, what a pair of gazingis, haaa!' They're always saying some shit you don't know what it is. 'Hey look, pay everyone off, pay them off, OK? This fuckin' kid...' And they always want to be grabbing you. 'Hey, kid, harrrr,' grabbing your face. 'C'mere, c'mere... hey you want something to eat?'

And they let everybody go, but they made me stay. I was sort of like a pet. And the motherfucker kept trying to feed me shit, 'Hey you want a little strudi? Hey Paolo, fix him some strudi. Fry it up, they like fried foods in Grimsby... This fucking kid, huh? Come here... Har har harrr...'

And then they start telling Mafia stories. And Mafia stories consist of motherfuckers that died funny, that they killed. And if you ain't killed anything bigger than a cockroach, that shit start worrying you after a while.

'Let me tell you... Hey Paolo, remember the time I made my bones? What was his name? Johnny ~~Salami~~ Sausage. He was a ~~Teamster~~ milk float driver, hurt a lot of people. We had to go to ~~Cleveland~~ Bexhill-on-Sea, the Caboozo brothers, remember that, the funeral parlour? This fuckin' kid, c'mere... So we go up, we're gonna show him a nice fuckin' time. Drive around, take him fuckin' bowling. (Who is that, Carmine? Tell him I'll call him back. Tell him it's a fucking stick-up, haaaaaahhh!) So, we take him to a fuckin' motel, we say we've got broads, we've got shit for him... So now I pop the cocksucker, right? So now I'm sticking him with this fuckin' ice-pick, right, and the handle breaks off! And Vinny Caboozo says, 'Hey, asshole, you're supposed to wait till it's melted! Haaaaaarrrrrr!

'This fuckin' kid...'

---

Current Mood: Zany!!

=

[This is a joke! But it is based on truth]

The Irony! Leam has been plagiarised!

2009-02-17T10:06:00.001-08:00

Update! This is brilliant:

A hilarious Leam parody

It was not written by Mr Kelly, much as he wishes it was. It is the work of a bloke called James.

You should, if you haven't already, first familiarise yourselves with the strangeness that is the real Leam's Myspace homepage (http://www.myspace.com/silentdogma) and his unique 'style' when he isn't plagiarising in order to fully appreciate how the above spoof is the most perfect thing in existence.

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Kevin Leam's Plagiarisms

2009-02-17T06:40:00.000-08:00

(This is Mr. Kelly's original article detailing Kevin Leam's plagiarisms, written April 2007 and censored by Orange in February 2009 following a complaint presumably issued by Leam or someone close to him. All facts were correct as of time of writing. The stolen pieces have now been deleted from his myspace blog. It is impossible to know for the easyspace one as it has been password protected. You'll get the idea from some of the screencaps. The links to Mr. Kelly's pieces no longer work without going via the Internet Archive Wayback Machine, as Mr. Kelly's original website no longer exists, thanks to Leam.)

===

[Original HTML page title at top of browser was: 'Kevin Leam, thief, liar, conman, plagiarist, creep']

Kevin Leam, aka 'SARC', 'Lunacy Phringe' or 'Silent Dogma', plagiarist

(See bottom for updates)

Sigh. Here we go again. This is a page for Google about Kevin Leam, a prick, who for the past four years or so has been systematically plagiarising me and other net writers on his blog on myspace and before that on easyjournal.

At the time of writing (April 2007) he is 26 or 27 years old (birthdate 30/04/1980), appears to live in or near Nottingham at present, seems to have been born in South Shields and raised in Grimsby, his full name may be Kevin Willam James Leam. He pretends to be a writer by stealing other people's work and putting it on his blog, claiming it as his own.

(Update - he also pretends to be in a band, or a more successful band than he is in fact in, see entry for Feb 6th 2005 below.
Update to the update - He also pretends to be a songwriter by the same method as he pretends to be a writer)

Virtually nothing at all on his blog, barring a couple of shorter entries and filled-in questionnaires, was written by him. He has not responded to a request to stop lying and own up to his thefts, and legal attempts to deal with him are in hand. He has plagiarised half a dozen of my pieces on his myspace blog (and countless more on an easyspace account he also has) and many more by other writers, most notably an American bloke called Steve Hofstetter. A partial list of the thefts follows. If anyone reading this has a myspace account, I'd appreciate it if you'd leave a message on his blog or homepage telling him what a prick he is, and alert the people he's deceiving that he's a fraud. [Edit 2009 - don't bother now - he knows; they know].

The URLs are:

http://blog.myspace.com/silentdogma
http://www.myspace.com/silentdogma

and he uses the name 'Lunacy Phrynge' and has used the title 'A House of Smoke and Mirrors' and on the easyjournal the name 'Idiot Savant'. [Edit 2009, and 'Sarc' on myspace and various other places now.]

(To find all the thefts on his blog, work back via the 'Older' button under 'Blog Archive'. It's hard to give specific URLs as they're very long and change when new additions are made. A lengthy but incomplete list of plagiarisms can be found further down on this page.)

(Update some time later: he's taken them down now, see bottom, but see screencaps for evidence.)

Screenshot of his theft of my piece
'The Lost Art of Seduction'. Portion highlighted by me shows him claiming to have written it: 'Warning - This has been a work in progress for ages, so thats why it's a tad longer than my usual blogs.' So let him not come out with any horseshit about not intending to give the impression it was his own work.

Incidentally the person in that screencap is not him, it's someone out of a band he likes.

This is what Kevin Leam, thief and sociopathic liar, looks like:

Kevin Leam of Nottingham: lying thieving plagiarist prick

Dishonest unprincipled shithead and wanker, to be mocked and avoided

(The above were taken from his myspace gallery. Two others were taken down by request. I make no claim to ownership and place them here without having obtained permission under the public interest exemption.)

His theft of my
'Albert Goldman is dead' bit

Reaping praise for it, from what looks to be some hot goth chick who probably likes to have kinky sex on crematorium conveyor-belts and stuff. She should be saying that to ME.

Partial List of Thefts

I don't have the time to be as comprehensive about this as I did with Pitts [2009: another industrial-scale plagiarist], but here are some of his thefts whose sources I've easily been able to identify.

(NB where necessary the fact that the real authors posted these pieces before him can be established by recourse to the Internet Archive, e.g.:

http://web.archive.org/web/*/http://www.michaelkelly.fsnet.co.uk/seduction.htm

For the uninitiated, that site archives most of the internet. Enter any address and it will show you when it first appeared and what it looked like back then.)

Monday, March 26, 2007
Rockafeller Skanked

Stolen from Steve Hofstetter:

http://www.stevehofstetter.com/column.cfm?ID=46

Thursday, March 22, 2007
Groundhog Night

Stolen from 'Ginger Says' at Thewildhearts.com:

http://www.thewildhearts.com/cgi-bin/gingersays_full.cgi?issueno=015

Wednesday, March 14, 2007
Manufactured Music - In a House Of Smoke and Mirrors Stylee

Stolen from a site called www.wastednetwork.com:

http://www.wastednetwork.com/showdoc.asp?artid=164

Wednesday, January 03, 2007
With Or Without You

Stolen from Steve Hofstetter:
http://www.stevehofstetter.com/unpublished.cfm?ID=22

Thursday, September 07, 2006
Keep Y'Troosers On Y'Little Bastards

Stolen from me:
http://www.michaelkelly.fsnet.co.uk/underage.htm

Tuesday, September 05, 2006
Just A Note

Stolen from Steve Hofstetter:

http://www.stevehofstetter.com/column.cfm?ID=14

Sunday, September 03, 2006
The Lost Art Of Seduction

Stolen from me:

http://www.michaelkelly.fsnet.co.uk/seduction.htm

Friday, September 01, 2006
The Legend Of Fat Dead Kev

Stolen from: Steve Hofstetter, The Legend of Fat Dead Steve:

http://www.stevehofstetter.com/column.cfm?ID=71

Wednesday, August 30, 2006
HEY!, Kid Ego

Stolen from Steve Hofstetter:

http://www.stevehofstetter.com/column.cfm?ID=1

Sunday, August 27, 2006
I Am Your Father

Stolen from Steve Hofstetter:

http://www.stevehofstetter.com/column.cfm?ID=170

(Haha, funny, the lazy thief almost gave himself away with this one, he couldn't even be fucked changing Hofstetter's Americanisms after he copied and pasted, and one of the myspace commenters says: 'Social Security? Child Services? Double Jeopardy? You are English, and as a Brit in America I wish to come home to Brits being British, America can stay where it is thank you very much.')

Friday, August 18, 2006
Subscribe To The Cult Of A Brand New Product

Stolen from me:
http://www.michaelkelly.fsnet.co.uk/ads.htm

Tuesday, August 15, 2006
M.O.S.H (My Own Self Hatred)

Stolen from David Jakielo:

http://www.readdave.com/20021205.shtml

Sunday, August 13, 2006
Its The End Of The World And I Feel Fine

Hofstetter again:

http://www.stevehofstetter.com/column.cfm?ID=48

Thursday, August 10, 2006
Literature in a House Of Smoke And Mirrors Stylee

Stolen from Me:
http://www.michaelkelly.fsnet.co.uk/pass.htm

(And he got four 'Kudos'es, the thieving prick, including more praise that should have been mine from another sexy goth chick who'd probably be too depressed to fight off my sexual advances)

Tuesday, August 08, 2006
Just Like The Movies

http://www.michaelkelly.fsnet.co.uk/film.htm

Tuesday, August 01, 2006
Rant In A Minor Pt. Whatever

Appears to have been stolen from the book/website 'Is it Just Me or is Everything Shit?' e.g. see
http://lasdagboken.blogdns.com/2006/index.php?entry=entry060806-185651 for the Kate Moss one

Saturday, July 29, 2006
I'm Listening

http://www.stevehofstetter.com/column.cfm?ID=181

Saturday, July 22, 2006
Paris Hilton Is Not Mother Theresa

Stolen from Steve Hofstetter writing at www.collegehumor.com:

http://www.collegehumor.com/article:1692086

June 2006 'Taking the Piss'

Stolen from Hofstetter again:

http://www.stevehofstetter.com/column.cfm?ID=1862

Wednesday, April 12, 2006
100 things to know about me and its ALL about me

As far as I can tell he did in fact write this himself. Here are some of the 100 things about him (the bold bits are me):

1, My name is Kevin William James Leam, I do however answer to the following, Kev, Sarc, Switch and Junior

3, I live in Nottingham having moved to escape the evil that is Grimsby, London is next on the map

5, I am 6ft 1

6, I have naturally blonde hair but decided to darken it when I finally had enough of people coming up to me in the street telling me how lovely it was.

13, I went to Lindsey Comprehensive

16, Im now in my second year of working for clothes store H&M

24, Im addicted to my space and get mad when I have no messages

(Please, someone, give him some messages)

44, I like annoying bar staff by demanding coke when all they sell is Pepsi, even though I prefer Pepsi

(Wiiiild and crazy guy)

48, I have an IQ of 139

Hahahahaha

54, I think I may have discovered a connection between drinking while pregnant and the increase in chavs.

Where do you get off looking down on other people, you thieving liar, you lying thief?

57, I cant stand cheating..I did it once when I was 14 and felt so guilty fessed up pretty much right away and have never done it and never will again

hahaha

96, I love writing

hahaha

Saturday, February 18, 2006
ALBERT GOLDMAN IS DEAD, ALAS

Stolen from me:

http://www.michaelkelly.fsnet.co.uk/goldman.htm

(Copied and pasted so lazily he didn't even fix the little dots that used to show up when I didn't know how to space in HTML)

The next couple show up on the net in a few places but I don't know who originated them.

Then there's:

August 2005:
PRAISE BE TO THY GOD OR WHOEVER WINS IN THE LONG RUN

Stolen from www.massacreindisguise.net:

http://www.massacreindisguise.net/manifesto/festo.asp?date=9912

Saturday, February 19, 2005
Kev's Completely Factual and Not At All Juvenile Guide for Americans Visiting Britain

Stolen from:

http://www.jomiller.com/guide/

Saturday, February 12, 2005
Step Right Up. There's Something Happening Here

Stolen from Matthew Good:
http://www.matthewgood.org/1998/05/some-men-get-the-world-others-get-ex-hookers-and-a-trip-to-arizona/

Sunday, February 06, 2005
Kev Must Be Destroyed

Stolen from 'Ginger Says' at www.thewildhearts.com:

http://www.thewildhearts.com/cgi-bin/gingersays_full.cgi?issueno=035

(This is really bloody bizarre. The Wildhearts are a real rock band, and that entry is one of their members describing a gig and the songs on their new album, and Leam has basically just copied it almost word for word and put his own name in. As he did with all my stuff and the other thefts, but as this is decribing someone else's life the effect is very weird indeed. There's a similar one somewhat later I couldn't be bothered tracking down. Is he pretending to be in a band in order to pull and impress people, as well as pretending to be a writer? (Update - Yes, he is. And in some of the easyjournal pieces he also pretends to have done stand-up and auditioned for a film.) Dealing with these people really, really creeps me out at times.)

Saturday, February 05, 2005
Who Said What Now?

Appears to be slagging off his ex-girlfriend (unless, of course, it was some other writer or a rock star's ex-girlfriend) and concludes:

'As a closing comment i just hope you realise one day that running away from your problems won't solve them, they'll just evolve into bigger problems which may result in you ending up a complete headcase, deal with them for gods sake then you might actually be a normal human being like me.'

Oh, the irony. And, the prickery.

There are several others that I'm damn well sure are stolen, due to their being amusing, containing stray Americanisms, or being properly punctuated, but I couldn't find them elsewhere and I'm buggered if I'm going to play Nancy Drew any more tonight. You get the idea. It's basically the whole damn thing that's been copied from somewhere else.

(Update - a bloke named
Aaron Karo
has been identified as the source for several of the other pieces on this and the easyjournal, with his references to the New York dating scene hilariously changed to say 'Nottingham' or 'Grimsby' while the Americanisms are left intact. But they're no longer online as they've been published in a book.)

I can't be bothered doing the same for his easyjournal (http://silentdogma.easyjournal.com/), which dates from 2002-2004, but I imagine it's the same story. Googling phrases from anything that seems literate will tell. A quick check reveals some of the same thefts as above, and several more stolen from my site, e.g. see the archives for June 2003:

(See
www.michaelkelly.fsnet.co.uk/answers.htm, 'Meaning of Death',
'Discipline in the Workplace', 'More Office Etiquette
and

www.rationalist.org.uk/newhumanist/5thColumn/SwingLowSweetSharia.shtml

and
http://www.michaelkelly.fsnet.co.uk/calm.htm
and

www.michaelkelly.fsnet.co.uk/block.htm
and etcetera and etcetera.

Or May:

All of the highlighted are mine, see various places in

http://www.michaelkelly.fsnet.co.uk (Again, prior existence can be established by putting the relevant URLs into the Internet Archive.)

Oh, or see August 2003, or...bugger it.

(PS. a couple of days later: someone started checking the rest of his easyspace entries for me and did 2004 before getting bored, and, yeah, it's the same story, all stolen. I've put the details below for anyone who gives a damn, but I think you get the idea by now and I'm started to feel unreasonably cruel for continuing to beat on this poor cornered rat. Thanks to K. for her efforts on my behalf though, and to everyone else who's helped or sent messages of support).

A few of Kevin Leam's easyjournal thefts, for anyone who cares

http://silentdogma.easyjournal.com/archive.aspx?year=2004

29.3.2004
Vangellis' Arch Enemy

Stolen from Steve Hofstetter:

http://www.stevehofstetter.com/column.cfm?ID=90

15.9.2004
Would Like To Meet............

stolen from Steve Hofstetter

http://www.stevehofstetter.com/column.cfm?ID=111

8.4.2004
LOve Love Hate Hate Which Side Now?

Stolen from:

http://www.pointsincase.com/columns/justin/1-4-04.htm

26.6.2004
Actor In The Street (see pic above)

(in which he claims to have worked on a film)

Stolen from Steve Hofstetter:

http://www.stevehofstetter.com/column.cfm?ID=98

6.3.2004
Guide to Girls' Secret Society of Makeup and Mister Potato Head

Stolen from http://www.collegehumor.com/article:247706

('I can't find the next but it's full of words like "Mom"')

hahaha

2.3.2004 | Nocturnal Admissions

stolen from:

http://www.rhythmism.com/forum/archive/index.php/t-1759.html

19.2.2004 | Teachers are in for it again

from

http://www.stevehofstetter.com/column.cfm?ID=84

4.2.2004 | Back In The Game

('most of it seems to be an e-mail forward found on several places on the net')

---

Why is he doing this? To make himself look good and to seduce girls by pretending to be someone he's not, I would imagine. As well as the myspace page, silentdogma has a profile on a dating site where he links to the easyspace journal (or had, I can only find it on google cache tonight):

('The result of my lack of sleep can be found here'
Lying prick. If only your parents had been able to sleep)

...as well as something similar on a somewhat seedier-looking swingers' site.

And there we have it. I don't think at this stage we need go into the aria about how this kind of thing, unchecked, would kill creativity on the internet - I for one am getting increasingly fed up with posting stuff here only for people to steal it or rip it off - to say nothing of the time I have to waste taking legal measures to deal with this crap. You're intelligent people and we can skip that bit.

I think all we need say in this case is that Kevin Leam is a sad act. He needs help, or he needs beating with iron rods, depending on your politics. He needs to come clean, take his lumps, and bloody grow up and be a man. In the meantime, this page is for the benefit of the people who need warning about him.

Mon 16th Apr 07

(For Google: Kevin Leam, Kevin Leam, silentdogma, silentdogma, Lunacy Phringe, prick, plagiarist, liar, where can I catch the clap in Nottingham?)

==

Update:

(Wednesday)

The idiot has now set his myspace homepage and blog to Friends Only, so no-one else can read it, and I gather from messages passed onto me is trying to deny everything:

"Did i bollocks, its some who asked me to write for them and i wouldnt"

Yes. With chops like those, who wouldn't want you to write for them?

I hate to be all tough and that but it really isn't going to help to add libel to the other things.

(Actually, let's not get tough, that's just hilarious. I think that's the worst excuse I've ever heard. I wish editors wanted me that much. 'Please write for us.' 'No thanks.' 'Then I will go to the uttermost ends of the Earth to destroy you. I will hack into the Internet Archive and half a dozen websites to make it look as though other people wrote your work. Mneeyahahaha! No-one turns down the Walthamstow Advertiser, etc.')

Also another glimpse into his fantasy world:

'I have spoken to Kevin online and on the phone for a couple of months now, and he has spoken as if the blogs were written by him as we had discussed them in some detail.'

==

Thursday:

I've received a couple of anecdotes about Leam confirming the picture of him as both a compulsive fantasist and shameless appropriater of other people's work, but I'd rather not use them so as to avoid dragging other people into this tacky kerfuffle. I should explain that the URL of this page was sent to most of the people on his Friends List before his site was locked off (which I gather annoyed some of the recipients who rightly felt it was nothing to do with them, for which I am sorry). Various messages got back to me, some expressing outrage at his behaviour, a couple abusing me for daring to impugn his integrity, and several sort of sympathetic sighs along the lines of 'Not really a surprise, we'd pretty much guessed, lots of luck trying to introduce him to reality.' Several of his friends tried to reason with him or tell him to knock it off or just pass on my offer to settle. They were swiftly deleted from his Friends List and their messages blocked, along with anyone who asked awkward questions or whose loyalty seemed dubious. Lunacy Phringe's House of Smoke and Mirrors is now a place of serene unity and unquestioning obedience, a bit like Waco just before it was burned down.

(Afterthought - what's with that 'House of Smoke and Mirrors' title anyway? And subtitles like 'Nothing is as it seems' and 'I'm not who you think I am'. He's been laughing up his sleeve at them all along.)

==

Friday:

Still no word from the brooding edifice of Fortress Leam, now splendidly impregnable to the ravages of sanity following the purges.

It's not my greatest ambition to waste time waging war on cretins like this, and legal shenanigans are no fun for anyone, but it looks like I have no choice.

==

One week later:

Some progress. No admission or apology* but he has deleted the thefts from his myspace blog, although not the easyjournal yet.

*(Indeed, I gather that he is, or fairly recently was, still trying to claim to anyone he thought stupid enough to listen that I had in fact plagiarised him - presumably with the aid of a time machine, and the collaboration of two American newspaper columnists and a rock star. Prick.)

==

(At the time of writing the legal aspects of this are still ongoing. Not going to keep updating so as not to give anything away, and taking it off my front page as I don't want to be constantly reminded of this maggot. This stays on Google, however.)

[Back to my website]

===

What is this about? See
here
What is Kevin Leam up to now? See
here

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