HOW TROLLS LIKE THESE ARE DESTROYING FANDOM

Interview by Brian Grant 

In 1994, my friend Mark Leigh and I, both passionate young journalism students and devoted fans of Peter Wyngarde, conducted an interview with Tina Wyngarde-Hopkins for the quarterly magazine of the Official Peter Wyngarde Appreciation Society [Issue 6]. While Mark moved to New Zealand 18 months later, I opted to switch my university major to psychology instead. Currently, I am engaged in producing a work that examines how the contemporary issue of online “Trolling” affects fandom. A recent study conducted by Australian academics estimates that one in three internet users has encountered some form of online harassment or abuse while navigating the web. My goal is to develop a psychological profile of individuals who seek to inflict harm on others online, exploring the relationship between the actions of trolls and their own feelings of low self-worth. I have been taken aback by the accounts shared by administrators of various film and television-related websites, forums, and social media groups I have consulted, regarding the extent of harassment and bullying they have faced over the years, which has led many to contemplate leaving their roles. It is particularly disheartening to note that numerous groups have already disbanded, having been systematically “trolled to death.” As is often the case, it is a small minority that diminishes the enjoyment of the larger community. It has been 33 years since my last conversation with Tina, prompting me to explore the developments within the Official Peter Wyngarde Appreciation Society and to hear about her encounters with the notorious online “Troll.” I was thrilled to discover that she has retained her sharp wit, and despite the appalling abuse she and Thomas Bowington [Peter Wyngarde’s friend and agent] endured from a group of profoundly disturbed online bullies between 2018 and 2023, she still manages to find humour in the situation.

NB: You will find all my questions and additional explanations are boxed and in bold, as are any interjections [bracketed like this]. B.G.

Like so many website on the internet, The Official Peter Wyngarde Society has sadly fallen victim to the occasional attention seeker or mindless agitator over the years, but it was only after Peter passed away in early 2018 that things took on a more sinister tone. When a series of aggressive and accusatory solicitor’s letters from Peter’s (estranged) family were blown out of the water in June and July of 2019, a concerted online smear campaign against Tina and Thomas was initiated on social media. A platform was eagerly provided to the instigators of this witch hunt by the administrator of a Facebook group called, ‘Department Wyngarde’, who Tina had been acquainted with for 25 years and who, for the purposes of this article, will be referred to as Mr. X.  

“Mr. X was one of the initial members of the newly established Appreciation Society in 1992,” Tina states. “Although the project had humble beginnings, our membership grew significantly within just a few months. Even with the influx of new members, he was the only person to show scant regard for social boundaries by appearing uninvited at my home not once, but TWICE!

“I vividly recall the moment I opened the front door on the first occasion to find him standing there looking for all the world as if he was auditioning for the part of a puppy in the Andrex* ads; his heart working like bilge pumps on the Grand Canal at high tide. He had one of those soapy voices often adopted by archbishops, and for a second or two I feared we were in for a Stan Laurel moment. While he didn’t quite lift a bowler hat and start blubbing, it was a close-run thing.”   

*British toilet paper brand famed for it’s advertisements featuring Labrador pups.

Despite these disrespectful incursions, the gentleman in question was treated with respect by Tina and her family on both occasions. But as the late, great Oscar Wilde once said, “No good deed ever goes unpunished”…  

“During the course of a conversation, I casually inquired whether he had any knowledge of the seminal play, ‘South‘ which was produced by Granada in 1959; specifically, I wanted to know if it still existed in the broadcaster’s extensive archive. I’d asked this because I was aware that Peter had been searching for a copy for quite some time. When he finally responded, he confirmed that the play was indeed part of the broadcaster’s vast collection. In a rather peculiar email 28 years later [in October 2020. See later in this article], he was at great pains to remind me that he’d quoted a price of no less than £500 for a copy of the play on a video tape. When I shared this information with Peter, his reaction was something along the lines of: “You can tell the Beep! Beep! Beep! to stick it up his a*se!” – an act which, I’m reliably informed, would cost a fair few bob in Amsterdam, but that’s beside the point! Consequently, we decided to reach out to Granada ourselves. To our astonishment, we discovered that they could produce a custom copy of the play on a VHS cassette for only £70. By his own admission, this opportunist was intending to defraud Peter of 430 quid! The purchasing power of £430 back in 1992 would be equivalent to around £1,000 today, meaning he would’ve walked away with a substantial profit had we fallen prey to this deceitful transaction. Undoubtedly, he could have afforded at least a two-week all-inclusive holiday for such an amount, plus additional spending money! The most ironic part was that he’d later assert that he quoted this price because, “I felt you were using me.” Clearly, he didn’t view his uninvited visits to my home on two separate occasions, expecting my assistance with his homework, as him “using” me! And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how you transform hypocrisy into an art form!”

*A ‘Bob’: British colloquialism for a Shilling in pre-decimalised UK currency.

As is ever the case, one doesn’t always see the full picture until all the pieces of the jigsaw are in place.      

“Despite being one of life’s damp hankies, Mr. X would occasionally phone me to bitch about some other poor sod including, as it happens, one of his Facebook buddies who’d eventually gain honourary membership to the band of online bullies he’d be instrumental in recruiting in 2019: “I’ve got something to tell you about J**k B****s” he’d mew. His calling were akin to the infamous Medieval torture of ‘Death By A Thousand Cuts’, as it would take him an inordinate amount of time just to declare who he was; spluttering and stumbling over his words while dithering like a greyhound in the slips. To the uninitiated, he’d sound as if his tongue had gone numb and was eluding normal control. Most people wouldn’t believe how listening to someone struggle to say their own name can wring your withers and leave you purged, but believe me, it does. After stifling a series of yawns, I’d often end up having to announce him myself rather than waste 25 minutes of my life I’d never get back! While he’d present not unlike the Dickens’ character, Uriah Heep – all, “I’m so very ‘umble, Master Copperfield,” when years later he suddenly began bombarding me with abuse in the manner of an 18^th Century three-decker with full magazines and, of course, from the safety of his own living room, he was far more truculent and aggressive.”       

Tina admits that the clues were there, but that she was too unguarded to have recognised them.  

“I clearly possess a remarkably poor ability to assess character,” she reflects. “Peter often remarked that I was overly trusting for my own good. I was destined to discover, at my own expense, that he was correct.”       

The alarm bells only really began to sound when, one morning, Peter received a letter from our Liverpudlian friend asking him out to lunch.  

“Only a few months earlier he’d asked me out to lunch. On the first occasion I’d broken bread with him back in 2006 (for ‘bread’ read chicken and bacon pizza), I felt as if I was seated opposite Eeyore as he barely cracked a smile between splothering, spluttering and darting outside every few minutes for a drag on a Woodbine*.Indeed, an entire afternoon was lost just waiting for him to order a starter! This time around, however, he wore an inane grin that made him appear as if he’d swallowed a dodgy prawn and sensed the Kaolin & Morphine might not have completely cemented the lower passage. This caused him to jemmy open one side of his mouth and bare his teeth which genuinely unnerved me (think of the brass plaque on Scrooge’s office door). As ever, he was taking an absolute age to get out what he wanted to say, so the intended 45-minute pizza-and-glass-of-Diet-Coke session ended up outlasting a Japanese Tea Ceremony! Come to think of it, it was only after he became part of a vicious hate-mob that he finally found his voice. Then he was firing off insults and threats like a howitzer. Anyway, after eating his fill, he immediately turned tail and tottered off towards the exit – his buttock cheeks clenched so tightly they looked like two halves of a walnut. This left Muggin’s** here to pick up the entire bill, as he claimed he needed all the cash he could cling on to for an upcoming holiday to the States. I wouldn’t have minded so much, but he didn’t even have the decency to send me one of those delightful multi-view postcards or bring back a stick of rock!  I could only conclude that he was planning to pull the same stunt on Peter.

*Woodbines: A UK brand of cigarettes. **’Muggin’s: English slang for ‘Me who has been made a fool of’,

“It was in mid-2019 that Thomas and I received the solicitors’ letters from Peter’s estranged family as referred to earlier, which we duly responded to with a pledge of legal action should they continue to harass us. A couple of weeks later, some chap with the initials J.W. [hereafter referred to as Mr. W], gatecrashed Mr. X’s ‘Department Wyngarde’ Facebook group as if flinging open a set of huge double-doors, and to an almighty clarion call, demanded: “Everyone stop what you’re doing and listen to me!” After claiming to be a “close friend” of Peter’s, he promptly set about transforming Thomas and me into a couple of vile caricatures, based entirely on a series of cynical lies and baseless accusations to deliberately mislead anyone witless enough to listen to him: “She’s played the grieving widow long enough!” he crowed; a barbed reference to the inexcusable offence of my grieving for Peter. There was then some mumbo-jumbo about how badly we’d supposedly treated Peter’s “blood family”, despite the fact that they hadn’t been part of his life for well over half a century. In fact, we’d only learned of their existence after Peter passed away. In the three decades I’d known him, he never once mentioned them. I genuinely have no idea what these odious crimes were that we’d supposedly perpetrated against them, bearing in mind that we were to meet them for the first and last time at Peter’s funeral in January 2018. All I’ve done since then is report events as they occurred and in a matter-of-fact manner. It’s an absolute certainty that if I’d said and done the things I was being accused of, I’d have found myself squirming before a jury of my peers before now! 

“As destiny would dictate, Peter and I had assembled a comprehensive list of every individual he’d encountered or known throughout his life, serving as a reference for the autobiography he commenced in 2016 [the list was created utilizing diaries, letters, and address books dating back to 1951. Peter was nothing if not thorough!]. This list was, of course, referenced. It will come as no surprise to learn that Mr. W’s name was absent from it, and no one who truly knew Peter had ever heard of him.

“It was abundantly clear from Mr. W’s opening volley that he knew far too much about what had gone on concerning our dealings with the ‘family’ to be entirely independent of those that wished to control the narrative. His much-embellished tales and accusations were merely a smokescreen to detract from the real villains of the piece, and to ensure that no flies landed on them, And so here he was giving out a blatant,‘Don’t look over here at us, look over there at them’ message. It was soon discovered that Mr. W was nothing grander than a failed bar manager from Birmingham, but someone obviously believed he had promise as a master of tactical deception, just as one might see the potential of rope, cables and masking tape in the hands of Christian Grey. It was all “They’ve done this”…“They’ve done that”… and “They’ve done the other…”. Of course, not a word of it was true, but then why let the truth get in the way of a potential witch hunt?! Inevitably, he came to stand for whatever he believed the Mr. X’s of this world would fall for. Certainly, it is often simpler to deceive individuals in such a manner than it is for them to acknowledge they’ve been deceived! However, it would quickly become apparent that artifice wasn’t his strong point, as he was about as subtle as a nuclear war when it came to his feeble attempts at disguising the fact he’d been put up to this. The types that stoop to dragging another person’s name through the mud via an online smear campaign often operate like a government quango. They need a patsy to act as a front so if, or more likely WHEN, it all goes pear shaped, it’s the sheep not the shepherd that will end up carrying the can. 

“Don’t worry, Prime Minister. When it goes t*ts up, it’s the idiots in charge of the quango who’ll take the blame!”  “Sir Humphry, you’re a genius!”

“It was one morning, a couple of days after Mr. W’s maiden speech that I had a lightbulb moment. I suddenly remembered there’d been a gentleman who shared the same first name as him who Peter once employed on an ad hoc basis to do odd jobs for him, which included tinkering with his cars and, on occasion, flicking round the flat with a duster. According to what I was told, this chap had carried a torch for Peter over the course of many years, and so in the absence of anyone else by that name, and with Mr. W insisting he’d been a “close friend”, it begged the question: might he and the odd job man be one and the same? 

*British supermarket chain.

“Despite bending the truth into any shape that suits them, bullies expect you to be the perfect victim by accepting everything that’s throw at you without hitting back or uttering a word in your own defence. In other words, “Do as I say, not as I do!” However, the moment they’re served a taste of their own medicine, they begin to squeal like the proverbial stuck pig. I’d witnessed it before; I saw it in Mr. W’s reaction to my odd-job man enquiry, and I was to see it again with someone else [Mr. Y} sometime later [see further on in this article]. It’s what’s called ‘Victim Blaming’. 

“While Sockpuppets like Mr. W are perfectly capable of making a spectacle of themselves without the assistance of others, for true bona fide halfwittedness you can’t beat teamwork! Like misery, bullies love company because, fundamentally, they’re cowards who only feel secure when hunting in packs. Everything Mr. W said was wildly speculative and wholly inaccurate, but that didn’t matter as his undertaking was to enlist a posse of willing idiots who, while obviously not the sharpest tools in the box, would nevertheless be energetic at putting out certain messages. There was no requirement for them to believe what he was saying, just as long as their nature was dark enough to join the chorus. What this conglomerate of ignoramuses didn’t realise was, they were nothing but cannon fodder in a bigger game. 

“Even though such people may never have met you and probably only heard your name for the first time that afternoon, they believe they know everything about you – from birth to the present day, plus all points between. With breathtaking arrogance, they’ll profess to have inner knowledge regarding where you stand on everything from politics to Strictly* and, moreover, what you’re thinking at any given time. Armed with this imagined insight, they’ll venture to tell you and everyone else who you are. In reality, they have no more intuitive understanding than a traffic cone!

*’Strictly Come Dancing’. BBC television show.

“Without establishing the authority to do so, Mr. W was essentially putting us on trial, based entirely on lies and insinuations. He clearly had no receipts for the accusations he was making, but with the blue touch paper already lit, all that remained was for him to adjust his gown and announce: ‘Ladies and gentlemen of the jury, you may now retire to consider your guilty verdict!”      

“Despite Mr. W’s baseless lies and accusations, it was left to His Noble Radiance, Mr. X – as supreme arbiter of right and wrong – to make one of the most momentous allegations; namely, that I’d forged Peter’s Will. It had, in fact, been written by Peter [initially in his own hand and latterly typed], on 1st November 2017. As would become a common trait amongst the vermin who rallied to Mr. W’s call, Mr. Y (member for West Cornwall), was a thoroughly discordant character with all the warmth of a mortuary attendant. With his newly acquired qualification in psychiatry, he was to state on a public forum that I was “unhinged” and otherwise suffering from some undetermined “mental illness.”  Sadly for him, his stand-up act didn’t get the laughs it deserved, but then live comedy has always been a notoriously hard gig!” 

Individuals like Mr. Y frequently attach labels to others as it simplifies their understanding of the world, despite the fact that these labels seldom, if ever, reflect reality. In January 2018, as Peter’s designated next-of-kin—registered as such in his passport, as well as with both the NHS and The Metropolitan Police (the Met) concerning his gun licence—the Met transferred his gun licence into Tina’s name until the three shotguns he owned were sold. To obtain a gun licence, one must demonstrate complete mental competence, which Tina accomplished with exceptional success, satisfying the police entirely. It is quite ironic that she could prove her mental fitness, while Mr. Y’s readiness to attack a total stranger online at the instigation of another hardly signifies sanity!

This behavior exemplifies the typical tactics of online bullies who, feeling a lack of control over another individual, will go to great lengths to manipulate how others perceive them. They will exert considerable effort to portray their victim as the aggressor, thereby evading responsibility for their own wrongdoings. They resort to blatant falsehoods; disseminate rumours and insinuations that undermine the victim’s morality by fabricating misleading evidence. This strategy effectively isolates the victim from external support. Their sole aim is to gain power, dominance, and control. Deceit facilitates this process, granting them a position of advantage.

“The thing with Trial by Internet is that it doesn’t afford the ‘accused’ due process,” Tina says. “Even a suspected serial killer or terrorist is afforded the right to counsel and an opportunity to defend his or herself. There’s no such thing as the presumption of innocence when you’re ensnared by the hysteria of the mob. And, of course, the ‘accused’ stands no chance when there are characters like Mr. X running off at the mouth like a copper’s nark*, and who’s willing to perjure himself in his own courtroom. What you end up with is a group of people who have no real knowledge of the matters they’re trying you on, but who will cast themselves not only as accuser, but judge, jury and executioner.       

*British colloquialism for a police informant.

“And so having worked his modest entourage* into egg white peaks of indignation at the wickedness; the sheer evil filthiness of our crime, Mr. W opened the sluice gate and, Whooooosh! A torrent of foul-mouthed abuse and revilement. While the accusations would come thick and fast, absolutely no effort whatsoever was made to prove his case, so anyone reading his verbal diarrhoea was just expected to take his word for it and, as already demonstrated, some witless airheads did. All that was missing from this obscene sideshow was a range of tasteless merchandise featuring Mr. W’s mug a la Uncle Sam and the legend, ‘Your Hate Group Needs You!’.”  

*From here on in this group of people will be referred to as ‘The Coven’ – a title given to them by Wyngarde fans – although ‘The Canard’ might have been more appropriate. 

The well-known saying that “a little knowledge is a dangerous thing” was created for precisely this kind of scenario. Consider the game of Chinese Whispers: one individual hears a fragment of gossip from another who claims to possess certain facts. This supposed ‘intimate knowledge’ is quickly embraced by certain individuals without any proper investigation into the validity of the claims or whether the source is credible. Eyewitnesses to crimes are frequently unreliable for this very reason. They do not truly understand what transpired; rather, it is their perception of events that ultimately becomes accepted as the truth.

Regrettably, there have always been individuals who are drawn to conflict like midges to a porch light. For example, some have been known to traverse the entire length of a football stadium merely to engage in a brawl, despite having no connection to the parties involved or understanding the context. Such opportunists will seize any chance that arises to vent their personal frustrations on others, and, predictably, this instance was no exception. Psychiatrists have discovered that these individuals often grapple with deep-seated issues in their own lives that lead them to feel inadequate or marginalised. Consequently, they tend to congregate with others who share similar traits (‘Birds of a feather flock together’). Lacking a sense of purpose or the capacity for independent thought, they follow the herd, waiting for direction on how to act and what to believe. Research indicates that many of these individuals have experienced bullying themselves; they may harbour resentment towards their superiors or feel undermined by assertive women, among other grievances. The anonymity provided by a computer screen grants them the confidence they lack in real life, allowing them to reclaim a sense of control. The ability to exert dominance over another person is crucial to their self-identity.

“The windy obsessives who’d ultimately rally to this particular cause were, essentially, a bunch of loose cannons, but rather than rolling about on the deck of the HMS Victory, were more suited to a child’s rubber dinghy! Idiocy has always lain in jumping to conclusions, and their eagerness to believe Mr. W’s lies before being in full possession of the facts was reminiscent of those old American comedy shows of the 1950’s and 60’s, when the audience would applaud excitedly before the episode had even begun. It was impossible to work out what their interest in all this was; they didn’t have a horse in this race and certainly weren’t fighting for what they believed was right (Cui Bono?)..While this self-proclaimed Justice League of online Fandom was to initially cast themselves as “Peter’s REAL fans” who, they claimed, were striving to keep his legacy safe from our evil clutches, this membrane-thin façade would quickly crumble when they began spiting bile in Peter’s direction in more than 70+ vile, sexually explicit, hate-filled rants sent over the course of almost 5 years. [See more later in this interview].     

“We now found ourselves in a sort of parallel universe where entirely foreign traits were being ascribed to us, traits that had no grounding in reality, and where the simple act of adding two and two together somehow equated to 95. Mr. X and his associates concluded, based solely on the word of Mr. W—a person who had no connection whatsoever to Peter—that we were deceitful and manipulative individuals. Well, of course! As everyone is now aware, no one understands us better than a complete stranger on the internet, right?! The issue was that these people were uncertain about the reasons for our (alleged) dishonesty or what exactly we were supposedly being dishonest about. Nonetheless, they had convinced themselves that they possessed a greater understanding of us than we did of ourselves.

Was it not our late Queen who said, “Recollections may vary?”  

Tina laughs ironically. “We could recollect because we’d actually known Peter. This bunch of maniacs hadn’t! But that didn’t matter. Mr. W’s overriding goal was to convince a bunch of feeble-minded odd-balls to sign up to his master(s) vindictive cause and, in turn, for them to encourage others to do the same. I was half expecting to see them marching down the street carrying pitchforks and flaming torches!     

“Despite having no clue as to what the facts really were, this circle of self-congratulation had busied themselves weaving a narrative around Mr. W’s preposterous claims. Relying entirely on their own imaginations for the particulars, they’d stand for no interference from sanity. Just about anything they thought would reinforce the idea of us being heinous villains was greedily consumed, while any inconvenient truths to the contrary were immediately dismissed. I suppose that’s the advantage of marking your own homework. With his selective amnesia* and gift for bigging up his non-existent role in the relationship I’d shared with Peter Mr. X, with a complete absence of any intestinal fortitude, was responsible for shoveling an industrial amount of coal onto a fire that would quickly rage out of control.” 

While he’d conveniently forget what Tina’s profession was, he’d miraculously recall an innocuous incident she’d foolishly mentioned to him some 15 years earlier – namely, something that Peter had said to her on the eve of their parting company for a few years (and for which he’d latterly profusely apologised – see below). A close friend of Peter‘s told me he was “devastated” when Tina left“

“It will come as no surprise to learn that while this tale was eagerly dredged up by Mr. X, the line “Tina was always good to me”, was to remain entirely unspoken!” she added.

“There seemed to be no depths of depravity (or indeed buffoonery!) to which this misguided group of loony tunes wouldn’t stoop. One minute they were accusing me of being an “obsessed fan”; the next, I’d held so much sway over Peter as to influence who should benefit from his Will. If only one of them had possessed so much as a single brain cell, they may well have spotted this inconsistency! Inevitably, we were to end up with a Strawman* situation involving them creating a fallacious argument that distorted everything we said and did, thereby making us easier to attack. You see, when the mob has demonised you to the point of the Untermensch**, they feel entirely justified in doing whatever they damn well please to you because, to their mind at least, you deserve it.”

*Examples of a ‘Strawman Fallacy’: Quoting the victim’s words out of context – i.e., choosing quotations that misrepresent the victim’s intentions; Exaggerating (sometimes grossly) a victim’s argument, then attacking this exaggerated version, etc.   **Untermensch: German for sub-human.

“As sole proprietor of the ‘Department Wyngarde’ group and self-proclaimed paragon of virtue, Mr. X was to enable what was happening by failing to discourage, challenge, prevent or remove libelous and abusive posts by Mr. W and his disciples. This served to lay bare his moral vacuity. While on a personal level he might only have wished to “blow the bloody doors off” as way of exacting some kind of misguided revenge on me, with ocean-going hypocrisy, he not only displayed an appalling lack of judgement in allowing this to go on, but was also witnessed actively encouraging and even contributing to these defamatory posts in direct contravention of Facebook’s Harassment and Bullying Policy. Such was his enthusiasm for the drama he was central to creating, I half expected to see him tottering up and down the aisle selling choc-ices and Kia-Ora. All that was missing was Rachmaninov’s Piano Concerto to waft through the ether and a sepia wash! As this campaign of lies and intimidation gathered pace, there didn’t seem to be a single act of villainy that wasn’t attribute to us. I do believe that if it’d gone on for much longer, we’d have ended up being held responsible for everything from the demise of the dinosaurs to the current hoo-ha in the Middle East!     

“As the weeks turned to months, it was becoming increasingly apparent that Mr. W hadn’t read the room particularly well, as all the accusations, yelling and finger-pointing had the effect of a dog whistle that only the most profoundly embittered and disturbed were attuned to. Clearly, persecuting complete strangers online isn’t for everyone. Nope! It takes a special kind of idiocy to blindly involve yourself in something like that. Ultimately, the vast majority of ‘Department Wyngarde’s’ membership elected not to lend credence to the malicious gossip he was spouting, and either left or came over to join us. Inevitably, Mr. W was to put me in mind of Noah when he failed to persuade his neighbours to join him on the Ark. I dare say that he’d anticipated a huge pile-on and feeding frenzy, which just didn’t happen. As one former member of ‘Department Wyngarde’ aptly observed: “It was a witch hunt without a witch!” Inevitably, all that remained of this once popular group was the effluence flushed from the social media cesspit by Mr’s. X and W.  

“It was interesting to note that Mr. X, as a self-styled Man of the People who’d oft been witnessed calling out Racism whenever and wherever he perceived it, was muffled in studious silence when one of his cronies began feverishly spitting bile about Jews, the LBGBT+ community, the disabled and women. Unquestionably, his labeling others as bigots might’ve worked better BEFORE he hitched his wagon to such an unsavoury bunch. As it was, he failed to heed his own edict. This tells you everything you need to know about his character.  

“Villains who tie women to railway lines while twirling their moustaches are easily identifiable. It’s the Mr. X’s of the world who disguise themselves as benevolent and altruistic that are not so easy to spot. In spite of all the virtue-signaling and pious handwringing, he was caught professing one thing while practicing another, resulting in him being hoisted by his own petard.”        

The situation escalated to a level where Facebook received so many complaints from outraged former members regarding the toxic mix of offensive language and libel that Mr. X permitted on his ‘Department Wyngarde’ group page, that Meta had no alternative but to shut it down. They subsequently released the following statements:  

Content of this group [Department Wyngarde} goes against our Community Standards, so we have taken it down. Because the admin created or approved posts that did not follow the rules, this was considered more serious.

 And…      

Thank you for letting us know about something that you did not want to see on Facebook. After carrying out a review we have removed the Department Wyngarde group as it breached our community standards concerning bullying and harassment. We have let the admin of the group know that it has been removed, but not who reported it. If you or someone you know continues to be bullied by this admin or former members of this group, visit our Bullying Prevention Hub to learn about tools that can help you.

“As chief tut-tutter, and despite the ignominy of having his Facebook page closed down for encouraging bullying and harassment. Mr. X was still pottering about being all holy. What he didn’t seem to realise was that, one way or another, the piper had to be paid. This would come in him being tarred with the same grubby brush as his potty-mouthed friends. He could no longer afford to be the human giraffe; sniffing down his nostrils from the moral high ground… unless, of course, he managed to unearth an earwig of questionable character that he could be sanctimonious to. Inevitably, he’d become the biggest laughingstock since Caligula married Incitatus!* That said, the group of impressionable dullards he was integral in assembling were clearly no strangers to prosecuting an online hate campaign, which was exactly what those pulling Mr. W’s strings had been hoping for all along. The type of people who involve themselves in other people’s business like this tend to conform to certain patterns of behaviour, and this lot were textbook examples. They’re what’s making social media such a dark and terrible place for everyone else.” 

*Incitatus was the notorious Emperor’s horse.

This hotbed of cold feet was to create several closed Facebook groups, or ‘Knitting Circles’ as they’d become known amongst Wyngarde fans. No doubt using ‘Mission Delivery Boards’ akin to those adopted by the Labour Party following the 2024 General Election, they’d meet up online to plot their next assault on Tina and Thomas.        

“They’d use closed social media groups for council of war meetings and as a kind of mutual appreciation society-come-Mad Hatter’s Tea Party, where they’d regularly convene for grotesque ‘show & tell’ sessions,.There, each of their meagre membership would jostle to outdo the others with their latest “cunning plan” – all of which, no doubt, was greeted with evangelical whoops and wails. Like rabid dogs, I envisaged them sniffing each other’s backsides in self-congratulation, with one of their number pleading,“For Christ’s sake, form a circle!” Then, perhaps, after all the lying and plotting was over, they’d retire for a cup of Tetley’s* and a finger buffet.”   

*Tetley’s: British tea brand.

Below are examples from some of the emails sent by Mr. Y in the names of, and doubtless with the approval of, ALL members of ‘The Coven’: Please note, that despite the following being the more publishable of the 70+ messages sent between 2018 and 2023 (yes, there are MUCH worse than this!), they still contain strong profanity and rabidly offensive Homophobic and Antisemitic language. As you will no doubt note, the author’s mastery of the English language was a work in progress: 

Of Peter: (These are just sections of the emails sent. More often they would run for several pages). “Thank God its dead, cremated and long-forgotten, the pathetic b@stard!” “The old dead queer that was ‘Peter Wyngarde’ was a fucking absolutely dreadful nasty deeply perverted sexual pervert!” “That dead pathetic dreadful fuck, Cyril Goldbert, aka “Peter Wyngarde” and “Petunia Winegum” was a really fucking pitiful bleeder. A pathetic closeted queer cunt he really, really was!” “Re: The disgusting dead and cremated homosexually promiscuous Jewish criminal homo sex pervert and dirty bastard foul fucker Cyril Goldbert, aka ‘Peter Wyngarde’.” “Thank fuck he’s now dead and burnt, Goldbert, he was utter fucking scum!” “The very longstanding Jewish sex pervert, Goldbert, was that fucking bad that death was the ONLY answer to all his problems in life!” “So glad he died in utter fucking agony and alone. Dirty, stinking fuck scum bastard twat.”

Of Tina: “That fucking cunting faggot and Jew loving twating bitch.”

Of Thomas: “A twatting fucking cunting arse fucking queer who was fucked loads of times by wyngarde!.

This is Mr. Y pretending to be Peter’s disgraced former Personal Assistant. Jeremy Dallas Cope. Little did the fool know, Dallas-Cope died in 1992! “Cyril Goldbert me first started having anal sex in 1973 at Earls Terrace. That’s partly why I started forging his cheques for the money as I felt he was not giving me enough money for being a lot of things to him including being his frequent male prostitute each and every day. I am totally glad he is now dead as I went to prison because of him and I totally hated him, he was a most terrible Jewish man and totally selfish too. I am in my 70s now and hate him even more today. Peter Wyngarde, he was an absolute bastard of a man and he treat me like total shit and a great many others as well.’ Jeremy Dallas-Cope.

From subject box of one of Mr. Y’s emails: ‘Peter Wyngarde Was Jewish Utter Fucking Shit’.

The author of the aforementioned text evidently faced significant personal challenges. Analyzing the emails he sent to Tina over a span of five years (which I have thoroughly reviewed), it is clear that Mr. Y’s fixation with Peter Wyngarde is unmistakable, as is his profound animosity towards Jews, homosexuals, the disabled and women. From a psychological perspective, one could reasonably infer that the issues he vocally opposes are likely reflections of his own self-loathing. It is almost as if he were venting his frustrations at his own reflection while composing these messages.

Instead of provoking the outrage he seemingly desired, this individual’s turmoil only managed to evoke sympathy from those who encountered his diatribes. This response included a member of the town council for his Ward in Hale, Cornwall, who, upon receiving a selection of these emails, commented: “This is clearly a very disturbed individual.”

“Mr. Y and the clowns he associated with were under the mistaken belief that Peter was Jewish, when in reality, he and his family were Roman Catholic,” Tina states. “However, being the idiots that they were, they seemed to think that by incessantly repeating the same falsehood, they’d eventually wear us down. What they failed to grasp was that if something is untrue, and your know it’s untrue, it cannot harm you. All the vulgarity and hate speech only served to highlight their absurdity. It was as if the Victorian freak show had never truly disappeared.

“In addition to the emails, Mr. Y was also to establish a vicious, profanity-laden website from which he would hurl insults, not only at Peter and us but also at anyone who dared to oppose him. Aside from parading up and down the high street with a sandwich board, he had nearly every avenue of self-promotion covered. However, it wasn’t long before all the social media platforms where he’d set up shop unceremoniously expelled him due to the numerous complaints regarding his crude language and mindless drivel. I occasionally pondered whether becoming one of the Internet’s most despised outcasts was at the top of his bucket list.

It was in September 2020 that Tina was to receive the bitter and resentful message from Mr. X as referred to earlier.  

“I’d shared a new email address for the website on our Facebook group page, and within just 10 minutes, my phone began to ring. It was Pam, a friend of mine who’d kindly volunteered to screen all incoming emails. She had some urgent news – specifically, that our newly established inbox had already been Christened by none other than Mr. X! Given his long-standing talent for talking b-b-b-b-b*****s, I didn’t have particularly high expectations for the content, and for what may have been the first time in his life, he didn’t disappoint. Apparently, he was making all manner of indignant noises – claiming that I’d ruined his life, not once, not twice, but countless times! I was utterly mortified to learn this. I mean, how could I have been so thoughtless? I am welling up just recounting this now.

* A member of ‘The Coven’ was to insist, completely inaccurately as it happens, that Tina was employing Pam on a full-time basis. This lady had in fact volunteered to deal with incoming mail so that she could weed out the sickening filth and abuse sent by members of ‘The Coven’, while passing on genuine fan mail.

“He’d obviously been sniffing around our Facebook group at the very moment I posted the new address, but it was clear from the inordinate length of this missive – which read more like a Guardian leader column than a standard email – he’d either been typing away feverishly in the nine minutes and 30 seconds since I’d posted the address or, what was more likely the case, he’d written it at an earlier date and had then sat poised like a coiled spring awaiting an opportunity to pounce. Indeed, it must’ve taken him hours just picking dust bunnies off the list of grievances he’d obviously had stashed in his pocket since the early 1990’s.

“Even before Pam made the astonishingly courageous decision to read this malignant rot to me over the phone, I was already beginning to lose the will to live, so by the time she reached the “Dear T…” point, my attention was wandering to such an extent that she resolved to just to give me the… er… highlights. 

“I think it’s fair to say he wasn’t easy with the flattery! In an opening line worthy of the psalms, he quacked with all the conviction of his own purity: “I know you’ve been waiting to hear from me.” This came as a something of a revelation to me as I could’ve sworn I hadn’t! In fact, by this point in time I regarded him with such indifference it bordered on aversion! I was swiftly to conclude that this was going to be yet another piece of fiction for which ‘The Coven’ was quickly becoming notorious. With life-sapping monotony, he launched himself into a Peter Cook-esque monologue a la E.L. Wisty; droning on alarmingly with self-pitying pomposity. Such was his ‘She dun me wrong, an’ I’m-a fixin’ t’git even’ tone, should Pam have thought to come in with a steel guitar accompaniment, we might well have had a Country and Western hit on his hands! 

“With exclamation marks brandished like lightsabers and clause begetting sub-clause, this charge sheet of diabolical skulduggery came by the hectare rather than the page and was, more or less, a litany of all the crimes he believed I’d visited upon him throughout the previous three decades: fraud, inciting fascist insurrection, handling a salmon in suspicious circumstances – you name it, it was there! It just went on and on and on… Blah! Blah! Blah! Jesus! Tolkien penned shorter stories! As deeply moving as all this was, it didn’t go unnoticed that, despite all these supposed ungodly acts, not a single one of them had ever deterred him from returning to me again and again over the years with his hand out! Funny that.

“Even though Peter had graciously signed countless autographs on various items for appreciative fans over the years without a single complaint, only Mr. X expressed dissatisfaction regarding the signature I procured for him. He claimed that I’d ‘forged’ it; a supposed talent for counterfeiting that would later become a recurring theme in ‘The Coven’ circles throughout their five-year campaign of intimidation. It is peculiar that it took him more than 28 years to raise this concern! And here’s the kicker – I was also accused of having written a letter to Peter around 2014 or 2015, in which I supposedly ‘praised’ myself! I was either physically present with Peter or in constant communication with him, and he entrusted me with everything from his supermarket loyalty card to his banking information, all while referring to me as his ‘Soulmate.’ Why on earth would I engage in such a ridiculous act? (Another instance of putting 2 and 2 together and coming up with 95?)

“As everyone knows, suspicion tends to be most prevalent in those that have done the very thing they’re accusing A.N. Other of. Either that, or they’ve seen someone else do it and have relished what they’ve witnessed. Every accusation that tumbled from his head into that email was a confession, and this particularly ludicrous allegation was to say far more about how Mr. X’s mind works than it ever could about me!    

“I shall be eternally grateful to Pam for volunteering to wade through this crud and to boil it down to its bare bones. In customary fashion, Mr. X’s allegations had all the gravity of a schoolgirl reciting Longfellow’s, ‘The Wreck of the Hesperus’. I could almost hear his quavering voice in its familiar upper register as he trotted out this litany of monstrous unscrupulousness; each indictment more ungodly than the preceding one. While I might only have the body of a weak and feeble woman, to Mr. X’s mind at least, I have the mind of Pol Pot!        

“Ultimately, I found being berated by Mr. X. was comparable to be pummeled with a wet lettuce. He was clearly a troubled individual who, at best, maintained a tenuous relationship with the truth. In an effort to gain the approval of his new associates, he misrepresented himself by claiming to be much more acquainted with Peter and me than he truly was. Fortunately, I’d only had the misfortune of encountering him on a handful occasions over nearly three decades. He’d met Peter a similar number of times at film fairs, one of which lasted less than a minute, during which he appeared so nervous that he almost wet himself. Thus, he had crossed my path approximately once every seven and a half years, and so was obviously relying on his supposed abilities as Liverpool’s equivalent of Mystic Meg to fill in the gaps of the intervening years. This would then be perceived as ‘insider knowledge’ by his new B.F.F’s,. He was never present at Peter’s home, nor did he accompany us to any events or outings. For that matter, I cannot recall a single instance of him sharing a meal with us or joining us on holiday. HE WAS NOT THERE, plain and simple, and therefore had no basis to express an opinion! He and individuals like him seem to think that I owe them a detailed account of my relationship with Peter, or else, in their view, it never occurred. I’m grateful that I refrained from sharing anything beyond trivial conversation with him, ensuring that whatever he relayed to his pals in ‘The Coven’ was purely a product of his imagination. This is the modus operandi of people like Mr. X. They twist language to manipulate reality. Thus, he was telling his companions that he’d been Johnny-on-the-spot, and naturally, they believed him because they WANTED to believe him. On Planet X, it would seem that the truth is merely an excuse for a lack of imagination!

“And as if to underscore how impressionable he was, he’d all but vaulted onto his soapbox to announce that he’d been “talking to one of Peter’s friends” who’d, allegedly, told him “‘this”, “that” and “the other'” about Thomas and me. While I have little doubt he’d been “talking” with someone [for this read ‘exchanging messages with, but never actually meeting in person, someone who CLAIMED to be one of Peter’s friends] – but one of Peter’s flesh and blood pals? Eh, nah! Even a two-bit troll with an I.Q. one below a carrot should have the brains to ask themselves: ‘Self. Why would a genuine friend of Peter Wyngarde be so eager to confide in a sh*t-stirring lowlife like me?’ Did he pause for so much as a heartbeat to consider what this person’s agenda might be? Of course not! I expect he was so giddy at the prospect of racing back to his compadres in ‘The Coven’ with these worthless scraps of tittle-tattle to care! I do believe that if Jeffrey Dahmer had rocked up on his doorstep dressed as Lassie, claiming to have an anecdote about us, he’d have invited him in for a brew!*

*A Brew: Colloquial English for a cup of tea.

“Without question, none of Peter’s genuine friends would ever dream of betraying him or those closest to him, especially to a sniveling internet bully. And, of course, Mr. X wouldn’t have given a tinker’s cuss as to whether the information proffered to him was kosher or not, as the only thing on his mind was garnering material for ‘Show & Tell Night’. While I’m confident that not even he would be fool enough to sign a letter or contract without being 100% certain of its contents, he nevertheless appeared more than happy to spread spurious gossip and groundless allegations proffered to him by a faceless, unidentifiable stranger online; accepting it without question and disseminating it without hesitation. There’d have been no enquiry made as to the legitimacy of the character he was communicating with or consideration given to why such a person was so eager to do what he was doing. In truth, the great dumpling had been having his plonker pulled by a third party (probably Mr. W or his puppet masters) whose sole interest was in him and his credulous associates continuing to perpetrate their hate campaign. But by this point, Mr. X’s head was so far up his own backside he couldn’t see he’d been led down a rabbit hole! 

“Inevitably, I didn’t bother to return serve for two very good reasons:  

• 1: I couldn’t be a**ed and,
• 2. The prospect of him responding with another dose of electronically delivered anesthetic was not at all desirable, regardless of its comic value.”

And, so, Mr. X had compiled this list of grievances. Pam read it. The world remained unshattered. What next?  

“Around this time, and entirely out of the blue, I was sent a link from a member of the Appreciation Society which, when followed, lead to Mr. X’s Instagram page which, quite alarmingly, was plastered from top to bottom with close-up images of his own face. ‘Though hardly photogenic, it appeared that in addition to chairing ‘Coven’ cabinet meetings and spreading spurious lies on social media, Mr. X had also been busying himself with what some cynics might consider a rather narcissistic pursuit. There was no accompanying explanation as to why he’d chosen to inflict this gruesome line up on an unsuspecting world, but it’s something I’m not likely to forget in a hurry. Indeed, I’ve repeatedly tried to imagine my life before I witnessed this solo rouges gallery but, alas, the image remains elusive.  

“He was from the tip of South-West England, which isn’t exactly the end of the world, but you can probably see it from there. With his severe buzz-cut and Japanese sniper specs which looked as if they’d been fashioned from secondhand reentry shields, he had all the charisma of a lavatory brush.”

While he’d make a number of very serious allegations about Tina and Thomas via social media, rather than put his real name to these claims, he instead adopted the name of someone from Tina’s book, ‘Peter Wyngarde: A Life Amongst Strangers‘ to secrete himself behind.       

“So as not to cause any embarrassment to his family, I’d given an alias to a person I speak of in the book, which is a perfectly acceptable thing to do in none-fiction writing,” Tina explains. “Until that point, Mr. Y – who was obviously only churning on one propeller, had had nothing more than a supporting role in this melodrama; dipping his toe in occasionally with a few grunts and a couple of one-syllable slights via the ‘Department Wyngarde’ group page, which was probably all he could muster at the time. The real trouble began when he worked out how to string words into sentences, which resulted in an onslaught of obscene, derogatory and sexually explicit diatribes [in email form, as seen earlier] sent via our website – some at a rate of four a day. While we’d initially been in the dark as to who was sending these things, we were pretty certain it wasn’t Mr. X as several of the messages were sent waaaayyyy after his bedtime! Nevertheless, it was clear they carried his seal of approval.

“It was evident from the off that Mr. Y was no fast bowler. While he’d attempted to pull an impenetrable mask over himself by adopting a username, he couldn’t quite hold his zeal and inevitably gave himself away a dozen times or more on Facebook and elsewhere. Promoting himself to the lofty position of ‘The Coven’s’ Chief Whip, he appeared to be under the illusion that I was obliged to obtain his permission before using the aforementioned pseudonym. I was sorry he felt that way, but whatever he believed, his approval wasn’t required. Ultimately, this one-man board of enquiry would waste months of his life in a futile attempt to track down the person I spoke of in the book. When inevitably he failed in this endeavour, he became increasingly vulgar and aggressive; accusing me of inventing the individual concerned. Evidently, he wasn’t familiar with the old adage, ‘Absence of evidence is not evidence absence’. My uncle Bernard isn’t mentioned anywhere on the Internet, but I know he exists because I saw him this morning! It was strange but, for the first couple of months of his sending these vile emails, we found it difficult to believe they were the work of an adult. It was immediately evident that the sender wasn’t intellectually particular or, for that matter, much bothered about grammar or factual considerations, as his messages were basically an inventory of every expletive known to mankind, with a dose of mindless filth thrown in for good measure. I tell you, terrible things were done to the English language by this bloke! While behaviour such as this might seem edgy to a 9 or 10-year-old, Mr. Y was a middle-aged man with a wife and son for God’s sake, so it was nothing short of pitiful. He quickly became stuck in a sort of rinse and repeat loop – seemingly in the misguided belief that it would grind our gears more the 70^th time around than it had the first. As we entered the second month of this desperate stupidity, it was clear that he was in serious need of a new act. 

“The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result.” Albert Einstein

“Perhaps I was being cynical in believing that his insistence on hiding behind a username was due to him having no confidence in what he was saying. But maybe the reality was – on a subconscious level at least, he was ashamed of what he was doing, which was why he tried so hard to conceal his identity. But there was really no need, as that was his wife and son’s job!       

“Whatever his reasons were, it certainly made a mockery of the boast that he “stood by every word” of this manure. I suggest that anyone who has a genuine, absolute belief in what they’re saying would have no reason to resort to bullying tactics, issuing threats or hiding behind an alias. The self-regard and arrogance of people like this overpowers any natural understanding they might have of their own behaviour and how ridiculous they appear to everyone else. It’s a shame his skills at playing a dummy couldn’t have been put to better use, like sticking him in Marks & Sparks* window a couple of days a week, for instance.

*Marks and Spencer. A well-known British fashion, homeware and food retailer.

“Uncertain of the proper etiquette, we weren’t entirely sure around Christmas time whether we ought to send him a card, given that we were hearing from him more often than from our own friends and family!        

“On one occasion I heard from Tim V. – lead singer of the legendary Punk band, Sham 69. Tim and Peter had been good mates for many years and had worked together on a couple of projects. He’d also contributed to my book. He was a guest at a Punk/New Wave event in South-West England back in 2023. While standing there minding his own business, he was suddenly to catch the unmistakable whiff of formaldehyde in the air and then, like a Cobra rising from a snake charmer’s basket, who should pop up in front him but Mr. Y. But unlike the bullish, Sulphur-mouthed boor he’d been presenting online, Tim was to behold the personification of Stravinsky’s Seven Stone Weakling who shook like a daisy in the teeth of a Force 12 gale. Quite bizarrely, rather than taking the opportunity to engage in conversation with one of his musical heroes about the band or music in general which was, after all, the reason the two of them were there, he immediately began cross-examining Tim about my book!

“On being told that every last word in it was true, and suddenly realising that yet ANOTHER of his wild postulations had hit a pothole, our Cornish friend found himself rooted to the spot for several moments, which doubtless led the rest of the room to believe he was ‘Planking’. Then in a scene much beloved of comedy writers, Tim described how Mr. Y’s jaw had dropped open like a faulty oven door, followed swiftly by coughs, splutters and low-level choking. When finally this Freudian delight managed to regain control of his limbs, he appeared unable to muster anything above a flaccid whimper to acknowledge the fact he’d made a complete and utter ar*e of himself yet again! But, true to form, there wasn’t so much as an embarrassed ‘Aren’t-I-a-complete-bubblehead’ chuckle as he sloped off in a rather undignified sulk; his bottom lip protruding so prominently that any reasonable pilot could’ve easily landed a Chinook on it! 

“I’m sure Tim would agree that the real heroes are those that have to put up with people like this on a daily basis. You seriously wonder how the types that believe idiocy is a virtue manage to survive infancy! If only Mr. W had operated some sort of quality control protocol when recruiting these dumbos, excruciating humiliations such as this might well have been avoided.”  

After this latest calamity, did Mr. Y slink away with his tail between his legs, harbouring deep seated feelings of guilt and shame?       

“Not a chance! When back in the bosom of ‘The Coven’ and not having to look someone directly in the eyes, he appeared completely undented by this latest toe-curling embarrassment, and still convinced that all was going his way, the same old blarney continued to jet from him. Of course, there was absolutely no mention of the ignominy he’d suffered at the music event; not even so much as a whisper about how he’d been told to his face that my book is the gospel truth, or that he’d shook to the point of soiling himself in Tim’s presence. Nor, for that matter, was there any reference to the mardy lip he’d slithered away with. He just carried on regardless with the false accusations and offensive language. When told of what’d transpired and, of course, after he stopped laughing, Thomas quoted from Act III, Scene IV of Shakespeare’s ‘Macbeth’, in which the eponymous character confesses the following to his wife:        

“I am blood Stepp’d in it so far that, should I wade no more, Returning were as tedious as go o’er.”      

“In pub language, this basically means that Mr. Y had screamed so much abuse and made so many fallacious allegations that he dared not stop for fear of losing face in front of the other ‘Coven’ members. What he failed to comprehend was that he lost face the very first time he wrote one of his appallingly bigoted emails and hit the ‘Send’ button. There really is only one thing worse than knowing you’re an idiot, and that’s NOT knowing you’re an idiot, and this chap seemed blissfully ignorant of what was so blatantly obvious to everyone else including, it would transpire, several of his own friends [more about this later in the article]. After millions of years of evolution, you’d be forgiven for thinking that humanity might’ve ended up with something better than… well… THAT!  

“We learned pretty sharpish that challenging people like Mr. Y is an exercise in futility, as it only serves to reinforce their twisted ideas, not least because they have an unrivalled talent for projecting* their own failings onto others. Mr. Y and his pals were entirely incapable of accepting that anyone aside from Thomas and me could possibly be appalled by the profanity and verbal abuse they were dishing out, or that other people might see through their veil of empty talk and distortions of the truth. This resulted in their blaming me whenever anyone else took a potshot a them. They didn’t understand that if you put a gun on the table, someone you never expected might pick it up and start shooting. I ended up having to beg members of the [Official Peter Wyngarde] Appreciation Society to keep their counsel as it only served to fan the flames. By this time though, it was evident that these morons were supping in the Last Chance Saloon, as the stories and behaviours they were attributing to us were becoming increasingly far fetched. Even some of their tiny but enthusiastic membership could see it was all becoming a bit Trumpton Town**, not to mention incredibly tedious. Incidentally, can you die of boredom? I suppose, theoretically, you could become so comatose by the monotony of it all that you forget to breathe!”    

* Projection is the process of displacing one’s feelings onto an other person, animal, or object. The term is commonly used to describe defensive projection — attributing one’s own unacceptable urges to another.     **British animated children’s television programme from the 1960’s.

“It was clear by this juncture that Mr. X. was beginning to wilt like an begonia in need of a squirt Baby Bio. And perhaps because of a desire to preserve what was left of his dignity, the word on the street was that he was desperately trying to “distance himself” from the foul-mouthed bigots he’d once so fervently courted. It wasn’t clear what the real reason was for this sudden departure. Perhaps Mr. Y’s burgeoning ambition to become El Duce in ‘Coven’ circles had upset the chain of command? Or maybe his ego was too fragile to play Andrew Ridgley to Mr. W’s George Michael? I suspect we’ll never know. It’s unlikely that ‘The Coven’ had any inkling he was a flight risk, otherwise I expect he’d have found himself chained to a radiator in a darkened cellar somewhere – his grub served by Mr. Y concealed behind a Leatherface mask. Regardless, the self-righteous pipsqueak obviously believed that by handing his notice in he’d somehow exonerate himself of any involvement in this toxic campaign of hatred and, moreover, from the filth his former acolytes continued to spew about Peter and us. Someone should’ve explained to him that once the genie is out of the bottle, you can’t just stuff it back in and pretend nothing has happened. What he was attempting to do was airbrush over the fact that this had been a joint enterprise and he was mired up to his scrawny neck in it! 

“Despite tip-toeing away with his halo around his ankles (run, Forrest, run!), the capricious Mr. X has since made every effort to reimagine himself as some sort of guru on ‘Department S’ of all things, who third parties consult when producing podcasts, for instance. Clearly, some people continue to believe his skirts remain starched and unblemished by this shameful episode, even though he was instrumental in recruiting a group of rabid Anti-Semites, Misogynists, Ableists and Homophobes. Either that or there’s more than a smidgen of hypocrisy at play here. While pointing the finger in our direction over matters they have no understanding of and which are none of their business anyway, certain individuals are still willing to entertain Mr. X. The fact that he’s even talking about something like ‘Department S’ given the content of the emails we were being sent in his name and others [see earlier in this article] is deeply offensive. He’s wearing some incredibly grubby socks regarding this issue, and those that continue to support him would do well to remember that the last bloke who was deemed perfect ended up getting himself nailed to a plank of wood! It’s only a matter of time for Mr. X.”

Despite their leading moraliser removing his august presence from ‘The Coven’, the hate-filled diatribes continued to arrive unabated.        

“After Comrade X’s sudden withdrawal from the field, ‘The Coven’ were a bit like a cricket Second XI with no creativity or skill, and yet they kept slogging away without getting anywhere near a win. Feigning injury seemed to be the only way for them to get off the pitch without conceding a loss. 

“Most people would find it difficult to make sense of the types that join online hate mobs, but then idiots like those spoken of here simply don’t have the same emotions and feelings as the rest of us. The individuals that chose to leap aboard Mr. W’s rickety three-wheeled bandwagon were sad, middle-aged men with beer bellies and comb-overs whose wives probably paid them to go out. There was, however, at least one woman amongst them – namely Ms. Z (delegated Minister for Paperclips): an old boiler with the voice of a Klaxon and a face as hard as a dressed crab. She’d been prowling the touchline for some time with shades of a KGB agent eavesdropping at a Leningrad bus stop. I wouldn’t describe her as a dung beetle exactly, more something a dung beetle might eat! She came across as the type that no one had ever taken the slightest scrap of notice of her entire life, including her ‘partner’ – a keen fisherman by all accounts – who’d apparently rather sit dangling his tackle in a freezing canal than spend time with her. Now suddenly she was a great white shark in a goldfish bowl. For the first time in her pointless existence there was a group of mindless clowns who were not only willing to acknowledge her, but who were actually prepared to listen to what she had to say.   

“Over the course of a couple of months, she was to launch herself into a series of unprovoked tirades that had all the fury of a Cairn Terrier gnawing at the postman’s leg. “I know you hate me…” came the opening line to the first of these unsolicited emails. This appeared to suggest that I actually cared enough to hate her when all I felt was abject pity, given the fact she obviously had nothing more constructive to do with her time than harass me. “I feel sorry for you” she honked without the slightest hint of irony bearing in mind that, by this juncture, she’d already wasted three years of her life fixating about two people she didn’t know and had never met!     

“Although the mouth-drawn-up-into-a-tunnel–of-disgust-look didn’t suit her (or anyone for that matter!), I was nevertheless moved by her obvious distress; I felt her pain! Being unable to offer up a chair given she was over 165 miles away, I wondered if I should sally forth to Oxford (for that is where she lived) with a bottle of sal volatile to rouse her from her angst…. that was until I realised she’d hastily deleted the [Twitter] account she’d set up for the sole purpose of sending this single, solitary note. She was obviously acknowledging the fact that she hadn’t the slightest confidence in what she was saying, nor had she the proof to substantiate the allegation had someone challenged her to do so. And so in the footsteps of the King of Rock’n’Roll, she’d swiftly vacated the building. It was left to the aforementioned designer to clarify our arrangement via Facebook – namely, that I’d point-blankly refused to take a cut of any profits made from these shirts. Not that such a fact mattered to Ms. Z, just as long as she managed to land a couple of cheap shots before scurrying back into the nearest grid. 

*Popular British TV comedy series of the 1970’s.

“Ms. Z’s venomous attacks might well have left a festering wound if what she thought of me actually mattered, but it didn’t. Inevitably, I just felt as if I’d been savaged by a dead sheep! And as for being the subject of her pity – well, I suppose anything is preferable to her flattery, which wouldn’t be worth having! According to her, “We [i.e. she and the pondlife she fraternised with] have a lot of knowledgeable people.” I could only assume she counted Mr. X and the spurious ‘Simon Milburn’ amongst that number – the latter of whom, along with Mr. W, also claimed to be one of Peter’s ‘great friends’. If only Pedro had known he was so blessed! Once again, none of Peter’s genuine pals had ever heard of this ‘Milburn’ character, nor did his name appear in any of the address books and diaries previously mentioned. Since I had no intention of taking anything she said under advisement, and being thoroughly unmoved by the whole experience, I asked Pam if she would tell the old trout something along the lines of, “I regret to inform you that Tina is far too busy to listen to your inane drivel right now, so would you mind if she ignores you some other time?!” This was hardly a battle of wits as the old dear had clearly turned up completely unarmed!     

“For the record, we also happened to I have a lot of “knowledgeable people”; none of whom have ever felt it necessary to:  

• Associate themselves with an unsavoury bunch of potty-mouthed trolls. 
• Secrete themselves behind usernames whilst posting abhorrent abuse aimed at women, the disabled, the LBGTQ+ and Jewish communities. 
• Set up fake accounts on social media to make hit-and-run attacks on people they don’t know. 
• Issue a series of online threats, or
• Repeatedly send mindless and abusive emails to complete strangers in an attempt to harass and intimidate! 

“I feel that if you have to resort to such practices, you know you haven’t a case. I didn’t hear from her again after this – not even so much as a gaseous whinny. I could only surmise that the ol’ bat had taken to her bed with Post Traumatic Stress Disorder following the T-shirt episode. 

“The most alarming of her online threats as it turned out, was her nominating herself to take over running the Appreciation Society. The response from our membership was a resounding, “Dear God, NO!”, with one chap insisting that he’d rather “Be skinned alive and p***ed on!” than see her at the helm. Clearly, there wasn’t much love in the room for her”

Ms. Z and her associates attempted to suggest that Tina’s book was entirely fictitious. Consequently, it must be inferred that individuals like the multi-award-winning director, author, actor, and producer Steven Berkoff [who penned the afterword], Sam J. Jones [who authored the foreword], along with contributors such as Annette André, Joel Fabiani, Brian Blessed, Melody Anderson, Martin Stephens, Carol Cleveland, and Caron Gardner (among many others) were also complicit in this conspiracy.

“Yeah, right! I’d have liked to see them tell Steven Berkoff to his face that he’s a liar!” Tina exclaims! “In an attempt to stir up trouble and malign the book, one of ‘The ‘Coven’s’ leading lights made the monumental mistake of contacting actress, Jane Merrow; a friend of both Thomas and me, and someone who has never suffered fools, gladly or otherwise – least of all those of this magnitude. I can just imagine the look on their faces when she quickly poo-pooed their poo-poo – advising them to go forth and multiply; never to darken her door again. I wonder if that was brought up in their next staff meeting? I somehow doubt it.”       

The Coven’s resolve to obstruct Tina’s book would lead them to appearing mob-handed (for “mob-handed” read about 5 of them – including the fictitious ‘Simon Milburn’) on every website and forum that mentioned or reviewed it. They would commence by vociferously expressing their discontent and making various unfounded accusations. In response, web administrators would swiftly block or ban them. Consequently, they would accumulate a significant number of negative marks against their names, becoming outcasts within the fan community. Furthermore, actors from numerous renowned classic British films and television shows indicated that they would collectively exit any event if one or more members of this group were permitted entry. All major organisers, including Comic Con, had them placed on a blacklist.    

“It goes without saying that anyone who reviewed the book positively would find themselves under siege by Mr. Y. If they were to respond or, worse, refuse to back down, he‘d return with reinforcements from the ranks of ‘The Coven’ to harass and abuse that person. Tragically – for them at least, all the bluff and bluster had no effect whatsoever on sales. In fact, several people who’d happened upon their trash-talk had gone out and bought it. One chap wrote to me from the USA, saying: “I couldn’t believe that anything in print could possibly be as bad as these people were claiming, so I went out and bought a copy. Best biography I’ve ever read!”  It beggers belief as to the lengths Messrs W, X, Y and Ms. Z were to go over this. Their obsession was off the scale!

“An inquest was commissioned by ‘The Coven’ focused on my mentioning that Peter and I had spoken at one point about having a baby. The comment made was, “She [Tina] was 57 and he [Peter] was 90″. This was followed by the rider: “I’d have liked to have seen that!”  This jibe, which was obviously intended to make me look the fool, served only to highlight the fact that this self-appointed regulatory committee was wholly incapable of following a straightforward timeline. I speak of a conversation that Peter and I had had in relation to this matter on Page 381 which, in the chronology of the book, occurred in the early 2000’s not, as was insisted upon by ‘The Coven’, within the final year of Peter’s life.  

“It was also asserted that I’d said Peter “changed” his Will to benefit me during the final week of his life. Again, this was wildly inaccurate. I quite clearly state on Page 473 that Peter had written and dated his Will on 1st November 2017. This was the only such document he made – naming me as the sole beneficiary. He was never to amend or rewrite it at any time thereafter*.    

*Nonetheless, Peter recorded the same directives outlined in the Will onto tape during the last week of his life. This recording is currently held by Bowington Management.

“Regrettably, ‘The Coven’ weren’t done yet. They were then to post the following: “She [Tina] tried to have us believe that he [Peter] had rewritten his Will and made a 3-hour recording while under the influence of Morphine.” Well actually, I didn’t! On Page 488, I make it abundantly clear that the audio recording was made by Peter and Thomas on the evening of 10th January 2018. The very first dose of Morphine was administered to Peter several days later, as is reported on Page 492. Once again, in their haste to make me look the idiot, all they succeeded in doing was directing the spotlight onto their own vacuousness.

“And as if all THAT wasn’t bad enough, one of ‘The Coven’ demanded that, “She should be made to do a Q & A session!” MADE, if you don’t mind!!! What the hell was this, the Spanish Inquisition? Here’s an idea. Why not skip the Q & A altogether and go straight to the waterboarding!”

So, the old adage that ‘No publicity is bad publicity’ is true?   

“Evidently. They were trying to hinder the book through any means necessary, which raises the question: what were those orchestrating this witch hunt so fearful of? Despite their attempts, sales remained unaffected in any manner, nor did the traffic to our website diminish. In fact, as previously shown, their actions often contributed to an increase in sales. That ship has now sailed. The book has performed significantly better than we ever anticipated. Typically, biographies have a lifespan of approximately 12 to 18 months, yet this one continues to sell well.

The above is a sales graph for just one edition of the book (hardback), and from one retailer (Amazon). The biography reached No.5 in the Amazon best sellers list, and has returned to their top 20 several times since it’s publication in February 2020.

‘The Coven’ also failed to discourage fans from visiting The Official Peter Wyngarde Appreciation Society website, which is regularly awarded the above notifications.

Caught in yet ANOTHER lie, did Mr. Y beat a hasty retreat to compose a heartfelt apology?  

“Eh, no! He just manufactured something else to plague us with. For instance, I’d stated over 18 months prior to the book being published that I’d give any and all royalties to charity. Almost immediately this clown, with Earth shattering conceit, DEMANDED to know which charities would benefit, as if he had some God-given right to this information. He failed to comprehend that this was MY money, and if I’d decided to douse it in petrol and put a light to it, it STILL wouldn’t have been any of his business! After cheques were duly sent to three separate charities, this fixated idiot contacted each of these organisations in an attempt to garner information from them and to bad mouth me.        

“I subsequently spoke with management members from each of the charities – all of whom stated that they’d never in their lives heard of anything so intrusive, not to mention creepy! Subsequently, this weirdo would set up a page on Facebook (yes, another one!) devoted to the Great “Charity Scandal.” There, he claimed to have spread libels about what I’d allegedly done to “over 15,000 people” via social media.”       

Ultimately, just 23 people would join that group, with at least two-thirds of them evidently perceiving it as a fan page dedicated to Peter Wyngarde, indicating they were not entirely cognisant of what they had subscribed to.This implies that out of the 15,000 he claimed to have informed, at least 14,993 had entirely ignored him. The world was indeed scandalised!

“Although I’ve continued to donate money to charities from subsequent royalty payments in Peter’s name, I’ve been unable to let members of the Appreciation Society know as I’d promised since I don’t wish for other organisations to be harassed in the same way as the first three were.”  

The UK police are now taking online bullying, harassment, and the dissemination of abusive content on social media very seriously, as evidenced by the severe penalties imposed on those involved in the events following the Southport stabbings in July 2024. The timing of the posts is irrelevant, as law enforcement now possesses the authority to prosecute retroactively. UK legislation classifies the actions of ‘The Coven’ as ‘Cyberstalking’, which is defined as: ‘A behaviour that is recognised as fixated, unwanted, obsessive and repeated’. It’s likely that anyone reading this would concur that the actions of this group clearly align with that definition.     

“Our solicitor advised us to maintain a comprehensive record of all communications and online activities conducted by this group. This included downloading all posts from the ‘Department Wyngarde’ Facebook page that pertained to us [completed in 2019], the entire website managed by Mr. Y, all their postings on Amazon, as well as all relevant emails, etc. Copies of these records were forwarded to Devon and Cornwall Police, Greater Manchester Police, Hampshire and Isle of Wight Constabulary, London Metropolitan Police, Merseyside Police, and Thames Valley Police. We were informed that even if the police did not take immediate action, they were required to document offences such as Harassment and Malicious Communications. Consequently, every member of ‘The Coven’ became known to the police. From that point onward, if any of them were stopped for a minor issue, such as a malfunctioning brake light, their names would automatically be flagged up on the Police National Computer (PNC). [This would also apply if any of these individuals sought employment in certain sectors or applied for a passport, among other situations]. Furthermore, should anything occur to either of us, our property, or if we received any further threatening or derogatory correspondence that hinted at their involvement, their names would inevitably be scrutinised due to their history of threats and intimidation. It is hardly surprising to note that two individuals involved in this witch hunt were already known to police. 

“The actions of these individuals can be classified as Stalking without a doubt. They persistently monitored our Facebook group, Twitter/X feed, and our website. In the specific case of Mr. Y, his IP address was consistently logged by the website’s service provider every single day—sometimes as many as 5 or 6 times daily—for nearly 5 years. He appeared unable to refrain from this behaviour, which was at best obsessive and at worst chilling. His method involved copying and pasting anything I shared on our website or Facebook, then he’d distort my original statements before reposting them on his own reprehensible site [I direct you back to the earlier reference to the Strawman Fallacy in this article], accompanied by a frenzied, profanity-laden commentary.

“People of that nature do not become obsessed maniacs overnight, so it was highly likely that this group had prior experience before imposing themselves upon us. Mr. Y certainly had a history, as corroborated by a well-placed source who revealed that, in addition to targeting us, he’d also been disseminating malicious rumours and unfounded claims about two of his former friends who operated an online forum dedicated to the television series, ‘Minder’.Who was it who said men can’t multitask?! It became evident that there was not a single social media platform on which he had not made an appearance to denounce this unfortunate pair.

“True to form, he was to set up yet ANOTHER Facebook group (Zzzzzzzzz…) entitled, ‘Minder TV Series. The truth behind the Forum‘. Here, however, the aggressive, vulgar bully who, by this point, had been persecuting us for years, was appealing to emotion in a histrionic display of withering self pity – or, perhaps, self-delusion – over the shabby way he believed he’d been treated by these blokes. Such was the sour sound of blubbering from this pity pot, you’d have been forgiven for thinking he was about to deliver twins! With echo’s of the ‘Great Charity Scandal’ Facebook group, the majority of those who were to join this one appeared to be under the illusion it was a bona fide ‘Minder’ fan group. This was borne out after he delivered one of his most impassioned monologues [see below]; sobbing uncontrollably about how he felt he’d been unfairly victimised.

“I (sic) truly touched that I’m still getting loads of new views. That means a lot to me. Hopefully it will stop good people from joining that bigoted, tinpot tyrant”s forum. Nobody else needs to suffer the downright abuse I did. Don’t let the bastards get you down or let bullies prosper.” Mr Y.

“The sole respondent” Tina tells me, “was a woman who, seemingly oblivious to the true purpose of the group, simply stated: “Loved the programme” – which may well have been great news for Arthur and Tel*, but as far as her thoughts on Mr. Y’s deeply poignant message, she might well have said, “The peas are nice tonight, dear.”

*Arthur Daley and Terry McCann – the two main characters in ‘Minder’.

It was noteworthy to observe that the subtitle of the group stated: ‘To tell the truth about the Minder.org Forum and its owner. The guy that picks on people with severe mental health issues’ [it can only be assumed that he was referring to himself here]. The absence of self-awareness in this context was truly remarkable. Recall how Mr. Y had referred to Tina as “Unhinged” and suggested she was suffering from an unspecified “mental illness.” This type of contradictory language is recognised by psychologists as ‘Janus-Face’.

One cannot help but ponder what those from whom Mr. Y sought sympathy might have thought had they been aware of the mistreatment he was inflicting upon Tina and Thomas. He clearly struggled to acknowledge the role he played in the circumstances surrounding his former friendships, leading him to seek out victims to project his anger and frustration onto. He was evidently unable to treat others as he wished to be treated himself and was, perhaps unconsciously, trying to substitute shame with self-esteem. Similar to Mr. W’s behaviour years prior [refer to earlier in this article], Mr. Y was destined to react with uncontrollable anger and distress when faced with the consequences of his own actions.

“Eventually, we resolved not to grant these individuals any head room, opting instead to feel only pity for them. After all, one should never ascribe to malice that which can be sufficiently explained by ignorance. It’s indeed tragic that for some, being a well-known bully and a foul-mouthed bigot represents the pinnacle of their aspirations. Such individuals resemble children who seek to destroy what they cannot possess, which I believe is the root of the conflict between Mr. Y and the “owner” of the Minder forum. They seem only capable of destruction, lacking the ability to create, which, naturally, requires a certain level of intelligence. However, even if they were twice as intelligent as they currently are, they would still possess only half the intellect they believe they have, which was why they ended up painting themselves into a corner.”

It was sometime later that Tina heard via the grapevine that this gang had demanded she and Thomas “meet” with them online at a specified time and date to “talk terms.” A threat was then issued – namely, that the libeling and harassment would continue “indefinitely” if they failed to comply.  

Tina would later discover the many grievances regarding ‘The Coven’s’ dreadful website and how, following an examination of its content, Google had taken it down from its platform. For Mr. Y, this was likely the first and perhaps only acknowledgment he would ever receive in his inconsequential life. What a remarkable achievement to include on one’s CV!

Statement from Google after removing Mr. Y’s vile website: The content of this website violates our policies, so we’ve removed it from our services. It contravened several UK statutes including the Malicious Communications Act (1988) and the Protection from Harassment Act (1997). We were to find words and passages of a racist, misogynistic and homophobic nature. The liberal use of profanity violated our standards relating to public decency. We believe the language being used was designed to be of a threatening and abusive nature, with the intent of harassing and causing alarm and distress to others.

Thank you to Ryan Church for the above. Sent to him by Google after he lodged a complaint about the contents of ‘The Covens’ website.

“It should be made clear that Mr. Y was not working in isolation in sending abusive emails, or in setting up endless social media groups and the aforementioned website,” Tina explains. “While it may well have been his fingers furiously tapping away at a keyboard at all hours of the day and night, the grubby paw prints of every last member of ‘The Coven’ were all over them.”

Despite the appalling abuse and harassment, there were a few moments of amusement. I believe that most reasonable individuals would find the following both amusing and lamentable in equal measure, particularly due to the sheer foolishness of the perpetrator. This incident involved Mr. Y attempting to deceive the public by posting a story on his website about a British Gas engineer who allegedly visited Tina’s parents’ home to work on their central heating boiler (despite the fact that her parents’ home is exclusively heated by electricity!). By an utterly astonishing twist of fate, this engineer was purportedly a card-carrying member of ‘The Coven’! The likelihood of this occurrence must have been, quite frankly, astronomical!

“In spite of my not having lived at my parents address for decades (perhaps if ‘The Coven’ had employed a more reliable informant than Mr. X, they’d have been aware of this), it was asserted that the (cough) “gasman”, had sneaked into ‘my’ bedroom where, allegedly, he’d found the walls positively dripping with Nazi memorabilia. GOTT IN HIMMEL!!! As way of illustrating this ludicrous piece of fiction an image, which Joe Public was expected to believe had been snapped by this ubiquitous engineer, was duly posted aside this fairy story as way of illustration.

“Plainly, the implausibility of Mr. Y’s account of our lives had reached a crescendo. I have no idea what his problem was, but I’ll wager it had a long, unpronounceable name! Of course, in his haste to make an issue out of this insane nonsense, he overlooked the fact that photographs downloaded from the internet carry metadata and are therefore traceable, so it was quickly discovered that he’d cut and pasted it from another website. Deary, deary me! The criminal mind, hey?! The Guild of Village Idiots would’ve been hard pressed to come up with something so ridiculous when planning a celebratory wassail; singing ‘Hey Nonny-No’ to the fertility god of farce!”

Only the most malignant of people would instigate an online smear campaign, which in its very nature is as cowardly as it is despicable.

“Those at the root of this knew full well they’d never played a part in Peter’s life, and that our existence highlighted that fact ever more prominently. We weren’t looking for praise because we’d been there for him or for stayed to care for him in his final days. What we did expect, though, was to be left alone and for our privacy to be respected. Instead, these people chose to encourage a group of mindless lunatics to carry out their dirty work for them. But that’s the kind of people they are: House martins nest in eaves. Sloths hang from trees, and haters, hate. It’s what they do. One day they may have to account for what they did, either to their maker or Peter himself depending on what. if anything, lies instore when we’re dead.”   

Individuals of this nature, along with those who blindly follow them like lemmings, can be classified as narcissists and sociopaths. A clear illustration of narcissism in the aforementioned episodes is the display of self-importance and entitlement exhibited by each person involved in executing this hate campaign:

• “I know you’ve been waiting to hear from me…” Mr. X.       
• “I know you hate me…” and, “I feel sorry for you….”   – Ms. Z    
• The expectation of Mr. Y that Tina was required to obtain his personal approval before using an alias in her biography, ‘Peter Wyngarde: A Life Amongst Strangers’.      
• That Tina and Thomas should have to “meet” Mr. Y online at a given time and date to “talk terms.”     

Sociopathy and Pathological Deception are exhibited by covert predators who disseminate falsehoods to tarnish the reputation of their victims or undermine their credibility in the eyes of others. This constitutes a form of gaslighting aimed at manipulating the victim’s public image to ensure that they are not believed. Frequently, individuals such as Mr. W, Mr. X, Mr. Y, and Ms. Z, among others, may seize upon such tactics due to their pathological envy or feelings of threat.

Undoubtedly, the events that transpired here cannot be attributed to the behavior of “normal” or rational individuals; indeed, anyone possessing sound judgment and ethical standards would deem their actions completely reprehensible. Consequently, one must inquire: were the individuals responsible for this malicious campaign of character defamation mentally unbalanced? It is improbable that anyone reading this could contend otherwise.

“I now feel only genuine pity for all of those that were involved in this,” Tina admits, “because they were victims too. The instigators of this shameful hate campaign preyed on their gullibility and incapacity to recognise when they were being used. As far as I’m aware, stupidity isn’t a crime, but harassment and repeatedly issuing threats is. In the land of unforeseen consequences where such people reside, reality would soon rear its head and bite them on their ample behinds.

“Ultimately, it would be these turnips who’d find themselves recorded on the Police National Computer, rather than those orchestrating the actions. Following a chance encounter with Gideon Falter, Chief Executive of the Campaign Against Antisemitism, we were advised to send all the data extracted from ‘The Coven’s’ website, social media accounts, and emails to the Technology Secretary [HM Government, UK], who subsequently relayed the information to the Members of Parliament representing the constituencies where each member of ‘The Coven’ lived. The Technology Secretary opted for this approach due to the straightforward fact that online hate campaigns frequently transition into real-world violence. We were swiftly assigned a (Police) Victim Number and received assistance and guidance from Victim Support. It was also deemed wise to inform local councils about the types of individuals residing in their respective wards, considering the language and threats being communicated. Who could truly say? If any of them had grown so exasperated by their inability to suppress us, there was a chance they might have redirected their anger and frustrations towards an unsuspecting individual closer to home.

“After our solicitor intervened, Amazon was compelled to disclose the identities of those persons who’d posted abusive comments about us on their platform. Typically, the offenders were hiding behind usernames. It is unlikely to be a surprise that the main instigator was Mr. Y.

“Due to the numerous complaints received from the public regarding the offensive content that ‘The Coven’ was generating on their website, Amazon decided to take down the ‘Comments’ feature [response to reviews] from their entire site. This action added yet another tarnished feather to Mr. Y’s cap, which was increasingly resembling Sitting Bull’s war bonnet!

The Amazon website did, however, provide some hilarity from time to time.  

“One of the most hilarious things I personally witnessed,” Tina says, “was Mr. Y turning himself inside out in an attempt to convince actress, Annette André, that she was “deluded” for believing what I’d written in my book concerning the relationship I’d shared with Peter. Ms. André had known both Peter and me for donkey’s years, so had absolutely no requirement for Mr. Y’s unsolicited input. Annette just couldn’t believe the jaw-dropping hubris of this fruitcake, but for those of us in need a bit of light entertainment, it was comedy gold!”

“Perhaps no subject has had such a devoted author as Tina Wyngarde-Hopkins, whose decades-long relationship has given him the ‘life’ he deserves – warts and all – and has produced a book that deserves my 5-star rating and a permanent place on my bookshelf. I can see Peter raising a glass to that.” Annette André.

Do you think these bullies will have moved on to someone else by now?       

“I have no doubts whatsoever!” Tina exclaims. “Such types are absolutely terrified of having nothing left to hate! 

“Normal people don’t get up one morning and decide they’re going to devote the next 5 years of their life to persecuting folk they don’t know and have never met. That’s why there are such things as straightjackets. There’s no point saying they didn’t know what impact their lunacy had on their victims, because they did, that’s why they do it. I did wonder what their feelings would be if some random moron was to treat their mother, wife or daughter in such a manner?”  

Any final thoughts on these people?

“Firstly, I’d just like to say, the fact that these maniacs hate us pleases us no end, as it means we’re nothing like them. I’d much rather spend the rest of my life being victimised by people like that than have them consider me their equal.

“When all this kicked off back in October 2019, I must admit I was taken aback by the sheer vitriol displayed by those involved. It was quite disturbing to witness how caring for someone you love, someone with whom you have shared decades, can evoke such animosity and hatred from complete strangers. At that time, I was experiencing a significant low point in my life, compounded by the loss of Peter and other personal challenges. I’d recently endured two deaths in my immediate family—one being my younger sister who succumbed to cancer, and my mother was gravely ill. I was consulting a Bereavement Counsellor who informed me that the relentless harassment and abuse I was facing was preventing me from grieving properly, which was adversely affecting my physical health. I seriously contemplated shutting down the Appreciation Society, including the website, until Thomas reminded me of our commitment to safeguard Peter’s legacy from individuals like Messrs. W, X, Y, and Ms. Z. Additionally, there were the members of our Facebook group and the thousands of visitors who regularly supported the website, all urging me not to allow this human detritus to spoil it for them. I recall a conversation with one of Peter’s oldest friends; her father had been a lifelong friend of Peter’s, and she had known him since her birth in the 1950s. She was present with Thomas and me when Peter passed away in January 2018. I expressed to her that I felt these despicable creatures were attempting to take Peter away from me, to which she responded, “Now you listen to me. Peter adored you. He loved you as much as he was capable of loving. No one, especially not a few sniveling cowards like that, can take him from you. Those who matter know the truth. What a group of lunatics chooses to believe is inconsequential!” She was correct, of course. One might liken it to fundamental Quantum Theory and General Relativity: it doesn’t matter what anyone else thinks, it will never change the facts!

“I once held the belief that the internet would foster the growth of Fandom; however, I’ve come to the conclusion that it may well lead to its downfall. There exists a certain people who cannot resist the urge to meddle in the affairs of others, preferring to hurl insults rather than engage in meaningful pursuits of their own. In my experience, some of the most egregious offenders are middle-aged men. One might expect a degree of decorum from people in that age group, yet this is not always the reality. I often ponder how they manage to face their families having systematically harassed and abused another person over the course of years.

“It’s widely recognised that people like as Mr. W, Mr. X, Mr. Y, and Ms. Z would never exhibit the same behaviour in the physical world as they do in the online realm, primarily because they would likely end up with a broken nose. I can only assert that they were fortunate that Thomas and I are not as unpleasant as they chose to portray us. They may soon find that their next target(s) won’t respond with the same politeness. At that point, I suspect they’ll learn firsthand what happens when a size 10 Doc Marten connects with a human face! Online bullying epitomises cowardice, and I believe that had we chosen to pay each of them an unexpected visit to ascertain whether they possessed the courage to voice their accusations in person, the advice about never sh*tting on your own doorstep might well have taken on an entirely new significance!

And Mr. X?  

“To be honest, I do not think about any of them at all now, and I have my doubts that they have remained bosom buddies either. If the doo-doo had truly hit the fan, I believe they would’ve been scurrying around like headless chickens – directing blame at everyone except themselves. This is always the case. In spite of all the threats, offensive language, random assaults, and mistreatment, I perceived moments when they could be quite endearing – particularly when discussing topics they clearly had no insight of They reminded me of a two-year-old child pointing at a cat in the street and exclaiming, “Look, mummy – a giraffe!” I sincerely hope they have all been able to obtain the professional assistance they evidently required.      

“I do regret not having paid closer attention when I thought I heard the sound of blades being sharpened on the morning Peter received Mr. X’s unsolicited lunch invitation. However, in my naivety, I chose to give him the benefit of the doubt; a courtesy, incidentally, he never extended to me. I must confess that for a brief moment, I was taken aback by how quick he was to knife me in the back. After nearly thirty years, one might’ve expected that he’d have at least had the decency to hear my version of evens before passing judgment, yet he chose not to. This behaviour reveals much about his character and should serve as a cautionary tale for anyone else who might consider engaging with him. Cowards often communicate with everyone except their victims. I just hope I’m around when the duplicitous oaf finally realises he backed the wrong horse!

“It’s really quite frightening to consider, given the lengths to which they went to over this, what Mr. X and his hired guns might’ve been capable of if we had done something to offend them personally. X certainly didn’t cover himself in glory here, and rather than discrediting us, he succeeded only in debasing himself. He certainly has no justification in peering down his snout at anyone else after this performance.

“Fame casts a long shadow, leading to numerous trivial jealousies among fans. However, this is not merely a case of a group of infatuated teenage girls squabbling over the latest boy band. In the era prior to the World Wide Web, a fan would be satisfied with knowing their idol’s favorite colour or what they had for breakfast. Nowadays, fans expect to learn every detail about an actor or musician’s life. Even in death, they’re denied privacy; it has evolved into a form of voyeurism. The internet has fostered an overwhelming sense of entitlement in certain people that appears to have no bounds.

“In 2019, when I revealed my intention to write a book about Peter’s life, one person remarked, “You’re attempting to alter history!” I thought to myself, ‘Christ almighty! I haven’t even started writing it yet, and someone is already second-guessing me!’ Naturally, this person didn’t specify which interpretation of “history” he was referring to.

“It’s not unusual to find people who assert familiarity with someone they’ve only ever seen on television. I remember receiving an email from a bloke recently who conveyed his sorrow, claiming that ‘Peter had died in poverty.’ Really? I wasn’t aware of that! When I probed him on the basis of his statement, he responded, ‘Well, he hadn’t worked for a long time.’ After I informed him that Peter lived in a Grade II listed building in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea, he retorted, ‘But it was only a small place.’ ‘Oh,’ I asked, ‘Had you ever been there?’ Predictably, the answer was a resounding ‘No.’ What a surprise! Is it any wonder that there is so much misinformation about Peter circulating on the internet with people like that around?!

“Thomas and I certainly aren’t alone in falling victim to a bunch of misguided losers with too much time on their hands. Only a couple of days ago, a Facebook group I’m a member of which is devoted to 70’s TV and music had to ban 9 people in one afternoon for posting abuse or using “inappropriate language“. Being abused online seems to be a rite of passage these days. Certainly, much bigger fish than me have fallen victim to it at one time or another. That said, you’d have thought by now humanity would’ve moved on from persecuting ‘heretics’ and denouncing their neighbour as a ‘witch’. It all seemed like ancient history a few years ago, but it’s started all over again. Now the inquisitors are faceless strangers skulking behind computer screens rather than then Catholic Church. 

“In 2023; we learned through a third party that someone was selling unlicenced photographic prints of Peter on eBay. Back in 2018, Peter had us promise to protect his legacy and it was a solicitor friend of mine who advised that we trademark his name and image. For the most part, we’d turn a blind eye to people selling T-shirts and the like, as we felt it was helping to keep Peter’s name in the public domain. But when we learned that the ‘someone’ peddling these photos was none other than Mr. X, Thomas immediately instructed eBay to remove the images from sale. Given the theatrical rage she’d flown into when making egregious accusations about me supposedly selling Peter Wyngarde T-Shirts, I wondered if Ms. Z had been similarly incandescent on learning that one of her besties was brazenly attempting to “Make money from that poor man.” I bet she almost swallowed her teeth! I tried to picture her up to her knees in handwringing and the slobber of derision; hushed voices from what remained of ‘The Coven’ lurking in the background, their lips suitably pursed. But then I remembered they worked by the philosophy of ‘Do as I say and not as I do’, so rather than be outraged, I suspect they started a Mexican Wave!

“Ultimately, Mr. X was fortunate that we didn’t insist on him purchasing a Retrospective  Licence, which we’d have been well within our rights do. Fortunately for him, we’re not as petty and vindictive as he is.

“If this hate campaign had gone for on much longer, it may well have challenged ‘The Mousetrap’ for the title of Britain’s Longest Running Drama. There have been the odd batty email from them since the main event, but having fired off their heavy weapons within the first week of this hate campaign, all that remained in their arsenal was the equivalent of a Coconut Eclair at the bottom of a Quality Street tin on Boxing Day afternoon.” 

It is heartening to witness more victims of online harassment, cyberstalking, and abuse sharing their experiences. For many years, this has represented the sinister core of the internet, where countless people have endured suffering in silence due to fear or embarrassment about speaking out. With an increasing number of celebrities and others recounting their personal encounters, it is likely that other victims of cyberbullying will feel encouraged to step forward and, if needed, report to the authorities. It must be profoundly liberating to finally shine a light on these despicable people.

“I’ve always maintained that sunshine is the best disinfectant”

A final word from Thomas Bowington: Tina is a genuinely kind and generous individual, who, as Peter frequently remarked to others, “Doesn’t have a bad bone in her body.” Peter cherished Tina, and she felt the same about him. At his funeral held at Golders Green Crematorium on January 25, 2018, I shared with the congregation, which included actors Caron Gardner, Madeline Smith, Linda Hayden, and Vernon Dobcheff, along with his family members, a personal anecdote about a conversation Peter and I had regarding his relationship with Tina. He expressed to me how much she meant to him. When I inquired if he had ever conveyed these sentiments to her, he replied, “There’s no need – we just know.” On another occasion, after the two of them had been playfully arguing, I remarked to him, “You two are like an old married couple!” He responded, “But that’s what we are.” In the last weeks of his life, Tina remained by his side without fail; she slept in his hospital room, fed him, bathed him, and held his hand around the clock. Shortly after his passing on January 18, 2018, she was met with despicable online abuse and shocking falsehoods from individuals who had been absent from his life for many years. The treatment Tina received from these people, who are well aware of their actions, was appalling! It is their loss that they will never come to know her. She is worth a hundred thousand of them.

There are a number of organisations in the UK that offer support and advice to anyone who has been harassed, abused or stalked online, some of which are listed below. Here are a few tips on what to do if you find you find yourself the victim of people like those described above:

• Keep a diary of all incidents – dates, times, what occurred, and any witnesses to what occurred etc.
• If you report any incidents to the Police, Council etc. keep dates, times, names of person you spoke to and what was said and what action you were told would be taken.
• Report all malicious emails to the Police and your internet service provider. They will work togeher to trace who is sending these emails to you.
• If you are being cyberstalked, try to avoid going out alone and keep to busy public places.
• Get a personal alarm and carry that with you as well as a mobile phone.
• If you think you are being followed make for a shop to get help. If you are not near a shop then knock on a house and ask the householder to contact the Police.
• If you notice cars following you or outside your house then always take make, model and registration, date, time etc. and report this to the Police if you keep seeing the same car.
• Contact the local Police Crime Prevention Unit to check your house out to see whether there are ways in which it needs to be made safer – stronger locks, window locks, security lighting at back and front etc.
• It may help to contact helplines/counsellor to give you regular emotional support at this time unless you already have a good network around you of support.
• Try not to allow what is happening dominate your life and thoughts. Try and keep to your regular routine, try to do things you enjoy doing and spending time with friends.
• Don’t allow the harassment, abuse and stalking to make you think there is anything wrong with you. The person or person who is doing this to you is disturbed. Remember the problem is with the person or persons doing the stalking/harassing/abusing, not YOU.

The Cyber Helpline:
https://www.thecyberhelpline.com/
Help and advice related to online stalking

The National Stalking Helpline:
0808 802 0300
https://www.suzylamplugh.org/Pages/Category/national-stalking-helpline
Practical advice and information to anyone who is currently or previously been effected by harassment or stalking.

Victim Supportline:
0808 168 9111
www.victimsupport.org.uk
Helpline for anyone affected by crime

Many thanks to Tina for taking the time to talk with me, and to Pam for helping to type up the transcript of this interview. Brian Grant