More news of The Emperor of Blandings
Readers of 'Internet Unpleasantness' will be aware of the frankly nasty attacks on many collectors by a Mr.Steven Peppiatt of Tring, Herts. His favourite accusation was that of auction-rigging and dishonesty on the part of anyone with whom he came into commercial contact.
Until last weekend, that same Mr.P was suspended from Ebay for the second- (or possibly third?) time for- auction-rigging, or shill-bidding as the Americans call it.
Like those you heard about on the news, he took the chance to list his items with a low starter-price to avoid charges and then, when the bids were not progressing as well as hoped ask a friend- (yes, P, it's you!) to bid for him. Sadly, if his friend threatened to end up as the buyer there would be terminal charges on the 'sale', so to avoid those he 'pulled' items at the last minute so that serious bidders were left with the frustration of a 'disappeared' lot within hours of the sales proper end-time.
More seriously, for his last identity ('uncle-monkey') Mr.P took the identity of another dealer- Mr.Kenny Fry and used his name on the account for all payment and correspondence.
Why would someone do that, one asks? HMRC might well, too.
YouTube star Kenny Fry
A note on his aliases
Our Mr.P lives his life behind other names- real or fictitious. For general purposes these are ‘The Colonel’ (as on YouTube ‘EMGcolonel’), ‘The Reverend Boggis’ , 'The Squire' and a shadowy legal man called Julian Myddelton (there is no such person in the country, although a Mr. Robin Myddelton of Hertfordshire is partner in a law firm local to our friend and no doubt inspired him).
Amongst other deceptions are his classics degree from Oxford (strangely he attended the same college as Jeffrey Archer!) and his extensive landholdings in the UK and Normandy. There is also the matter of his descent from the seventh century 'King of the Franks', Pepin of Herstal, from which he draws one of his very numerous email addresses!