Paul is by no means your conventional blogger. His dress sense is that of UKIP MEP, Nigel Farage and his attitude towards his blog is like that of a journalist towards a traditional newspaper. It's about finding the news and being the first to get it out. This somewhat differs from your classic ConHome or Left foot forward blogs, which sometimes opt for publishing comment pieces that Paul describes as being "worthless".
I had arranged to meet the 50-year-old blogger at his apartment on Marsham Street, which is just a five minute walk from parliament. Two bedroom flats in the building go for around £1.2m. So after having spent years not being able to pay off a mortgage, it’s fair to say he isn’t struggling now. We arrived at Sapori's cafe that Paul described "as popular amongst the Taxi driver community". "John Bercow was the right-wing candidate for chairman at FCS." "My parents weren’t very political." He says. "I was a bright kid and very much felt I was on a winning side and I didn’t have any formative experiences with summer holidays in Spain and nothing unusual till I was a teenager." It didn't sound like the kind of childhood that would be the foundations for an anti-establishment rebel that we see today. His engagement in politics like that of many politicians and journalists took place when he was a teenager and member of the Federation of Conservative Students, a time which he talks of fondly. It was there that he encountered a young John Bercow, who at the time was standing for the position of chairman for FCS. Paul talks about how "the animosity strings back to the closure of FCS. He was the right-wing candidate at the time, and he stabbed everyone in the back because he was part of the closure." He then went on to joke about how it's okay now because everyone knows John Bercows a traitor. "I can see that you are the Mr Big of Acid House." Before the blogging career kicked off, the world of Acid house and PR came calling. “After years spent at think tanks and campaigns, a friend of mine calls me up and says, "I’m in a bit of trouble" and I said yes I could see that you are the Mr Big of Acid house.” Having bonded through video gaming, he had reached out to Paul and asked whether or not Paul could help him when it came to dealing with the media. Paul had only agreed to help out thinking it would be a part-time job on the weekend. However, it ended up becoming his main occupation. One of his significant regrets was writing up the whole experience which he describes as a “great mistake because whenever they do 10 or 20 years of Acid House, I do these interviews when I was only in it for 18 months. There are bigger parts of its History.” "I was in casinos raking them like they were an ATM." What may have looked like a steady career blossoming for Paul, actually started to take a different path. Another passion which drove Paul was gambling and the art of card counting. He went into detail about how him and his friends would try and beat the casinos. “We would use computers, and we would key in the cards that would come out, by using binary. And for about 18 months/two years, I was in casinos raking them like they were an ATM.” All was going swimmingly, until one Christmas when in his own words, he “screwed up” and ended up losing £16,000 in 15 minutes. According to Paul, his wife wasn’t impressed with the fact that her boyfriend couldn’t afford to buy Christmas presents, but also the general idea of living in poverty wasn’t that appealing. After filing for bankruptcy, Paul decided that it was time for a fresh start and having spent time drifting in and out of the City with an unsuccessful few years in broking, 2004 came around and that was the year that Paul Staines decided to make his name as a political blogger. "Guido Fawkes is one of the most highly rated blogs in the UK" Coming up with the name for an anti-establishment blog wasn’t that difficult. The most anti-political figure in British history, of course, is Guy Fawkes. Since 2004, the Guido Fawkes blog has become one of the most highly rated blogs in the UK. Paul says it’s all down to one thing, to write compelling content. As traffic started to grow on the site, so did the media speculation surrounding who was behind the Guido Fawkes blog. In the end, Newsnight exposed Paul through Jeremy Paxman’s repetitious questioning, asking him “why he was so insistent on being anonymous?” However, the reason why things went so badly for Paul was that earlier, and edited out, Paul had originally asked Paxman about whether or not licence fee payers were getting their money's worth for Paxman's £1 million salary. According to Paul, Jeremy was fuming and started shouting “YOU DON’T KNOW HOW MUCH I EARN!”
Also amongst the rise of blogging and social media, Guido Fawkes hasn't just become a phenomenon through its website but has also gained popularity on Twitter with MPs, journalists and political press teams continually following everything Paul and the team have to say.
For many years the Guido Fawkes blog had just been viewed by political anoraks and MPs in Westminster. However in 2015, when former Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson was suspended by the BBC, Paul decided that he would start up a petition to bring Clarkson back. Guido Fawkes managed to obtain over 1 million signatures, and with that, the team drove a tank to Broadcasting house in London so they could deliver it personally. Paul talks about how he was supposed to be the one in the tank, however, due to the fact he had babysitting duties that weekend it ended up with fellow blogger Harry Cole delivering it instead.
Paul doesn't usually do interviews, so this moment with BBC News is considered to be a rarity. There have been brief points of his blogging career where he has appeared on Daily Politics or This Morning debating against Guardian columnist Owen Jones, however, on the whole, he doesn't see the need for it. Probably because he already has the exposure, so why would he need to keep appearing on our screens?
Guido Fawkes is the home of political scandal and sticking two fingers up to the establishment; no one does it better. Mainly because no one dares to. So I daringly asked how the Guido Fawkes blog had changed his life financially? And how over the past ten years it has brought a sense of purpose to what seemed like a directionless career. He merely rounded it off by saying: “My wife paid the mortgage for four years. She doesn’t pay for it now. We live on a beach.”
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AuthorEdward Jeffery Archives
April 2019
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