I was doing a bit of trawling yesterday investigating ‘a well-known fact’ among the lower echelons of British society in Thailand that I am the source of all the misfortune that befalls them from Britain’s tabloid press.
So I went to the SUN and searched my name and lo and behold nothing. That can’t be right I thought, because I pretty much feed all the newspapers in the UK and of course know I have done stuff for the SUN, lots!
So I tried again this time doing a google-search using my name in conjunction with the SUN. And there it was bold as brass as they say up north, and right under a story I had done exposing a British child abuser in a Bangkok school. A Thai gay forum publish the following thread.
‘ANDREW DRUMMOND GETS A HARD ON: GAY THAILAND’
Well, that’s a bit suggestive. And what an announcement to make to Thailand’s gay community! Well maybe not so bad. I showed it to the wife and she has been winking suggestively all day. (Well, I might be laying it on a bit thick here)
sawatdee-gay
So I clicked on the link. (This may only work from Thailand if you have MCOT sex site clearance (vii) gay (c) blogs) It seems one of the posters on Sawatdee Gay Thailand had taken an exception to a story I wrote not so long ago announcing the fact that the Thai Immigration police would now deport any foreigner known to have been convicted of child sex abuse in their home country.
D.J. HARD HAT
The first Brit to be deported was a chap called Gary Robcoy, who like the guy in the SUN story above, had found a job teaching in a Bangkok school. At the end of my story I gave information about how people could report child sex abuse by foreigners and a list of police and organisations they could call.
My final comment was: ‘And, if the worst comes to the worst, don’t go out and borrow a .38. You can always contact me here because I have direct lines into most’
Anyway the poster on Sawatdee Gay calling himself DJ Hard Hat took great exception to this. This is his post below.
Andrew Drummond hails this as a victory against ‘perverts’ and thrown his metaphorical hat in the air. Fair enough.
AD then invites anybody to send him names of people and he will investigate them to see if they fall into the same category as the subject of the article.
No evidence of any kind is required to inform on people and send their details to this self-righteous, self-appointed Witchfinder General – any ‘suspicion’ will be more than enough he assures us, for AD to set his ‘contacts’ on to them.
Well, I’m not sure I approve of that, but at least it’s good to know we can sleep safely at night knowing that AD will protect us from people who are doing nothing wrong. The kind of people that AD will save us from having to take a .38 to, as he says himself.
But on the other hand, imagine if somebody was running a boy prostitution racket within a bar, kept some very dodgy company indeed, and even acquired a criminal record in Thailand – there’s would be absolutely no way that Andrew Drummond would step down from his moral high ground to defend you, is there? Especially since every time you solicited an ‘off’ fee at your ‘bar’ you were probably aiding and abetting an illegal act. A purely hypothetical situation of course, because AD would never get involved with people like that, would he?
I’m quite sure he will appear here to explain the apparent double standards, which of course are perfectly acceptable in British ‘journalism’ .
DJ Hardhat
Well of course there are easy answers to this letter. First, I’m not throwing my hat into the air at the latest news as a victory against perverts, because this is only the policy of the current Immigration Chief. I would much prefer it was set in stone.
Secondly I have never invited people to send me the names of child abusers so I can investigate. This is a matter for the organisations I named and whose details I gave, though of course I do occasionally confront child abusers (the most notable one being Gary Glitter) on special request.
And thirdly there is of course no connection between child sexual abusers and the owner of a gay venue in Pattaya who was set up with drugs, in such a way that it makes some of Britain’s dirtiest villains look like camp comedian Alan Carr, and whom I defended vehemently. See Fighting for Justice.
Actually DJ Hard Hat was put down quite quickly by other posters and then the thread degenerated into a squabble between two people.
Then a chap called himself ‘Lunchtime O’Booze (a famous Private Eye byline) wrote in to say I had a young Thai wife and was thus a pervy Brit taking cheap sex with young Thai ladies. At which my wife asked: ‘Are you?’….. …………..Bad call! … But I’m not.
(Ironically I was a contributor to Private’s Eye’s lunchtimne O’Booze column and this may in fact be an indirect reason why I am now in Thailand)
So to set the record straight I duly signed up for Sawatdee Gay and posted three items for the rest of the forum to see.
Cockaleakie
I used the name ‘Cockaleakie’ . I really do not know why it came to me (some psychiatrist will no doubt have an answer) but for the uninformed this is only the name of a rather delicious Scottish soup.
First I posted my original article on which people seemed to be commenting unseen.
Secondly I posted my answer to D.J. Hard Hat.
And then I asked a question of ‘Lunchtime O’Booze’ who also wrote the following in answer to a poster who supported the deportations saying Britain, Australian, the US, New Zealand and Australia would do the same:
‘That is utter clap trap and symptomatic of someone who actually believes British tabloids.
‘I should have added. I write for them and make up crap every week. They print it, you read it and believe and I bloody well drink. So there.’
Yes. Sure.
Actually I asked merely which esteemed newspapers he wrote for and could he provide an example of his work, say an article.
Anyway I duly went down for ‘supper’ as we say north of Hadrian’s Wall; watched BBC news without the sound (Thats the way Thai True TV provided it at the time) and then I checked Sawatdee Gay again. All my posts had disappeared. Then I tried to log-in. AH!Banned on my first day!
Hence I am the man Sawatdee Gay not only tried to gag – but actually did on their site after three innocuous posts.
Anyway I do have gay friends, designers, artists, entrepreneurs, rent-boys (no just joking) and they have always seemed to me to be a little smarter than their heterosexual equivalents in Pattaya at least. But then of course, I suppose, when it comes to ‘hard-ons’ maybe their wit and intelligence probably flies out the window too.
I checked out the posts for Lunchtime O’Booze and Hard Hat and yes, as expected, I found that in topics featuring the arrest of a foreigners for child sex abuse, one or other of them was invariably up there on their ‘Innocent until proved guilty’ soap box.
It’s not a sentiment with which I disagree. But of course child abusers know and have proved time after time, as I pointed out, that they can just buy themselves off in Thailand. One has just been given bail in Chiang Mai against all odds.
Of course you get these posters on the normal forums in Thailand too (I’m using the word ‘normal’ very loosely here) and all too often, arguing along the lines that, as the age of consent in Burkina Faso or some such place is 7, why not here too!
There is also the guy who keeps announcing that ‘Mohammed had a nine year old wife’ etc., so what’s good for Mohammed is, well, you get the gist.
As statistically most foreign child abusers in Thailand now seek young boys it is inevitable some will turn up on sites like Sawatdee Gay. But they are in the minority and someone should learn how to use the delete button and know what are right and wrong posts before this forum hits, er, rock bottom.
Currently if you delve deeper into Sawatdee Gay, past ‘Bottles in the Ass Shows’ and down through the thread where a poster complains that there are no BJ bars for gays in Thailand, you get to a site which gives a cruise rating for just about every male toilet in Bangkok’s shopping malls, Tescos’ and Big Cs, which just shows how close I must have been at the Big C in Rajadamri the other day.
But don’t go there! Tomorrow’s the Sabbath.
Anyway to continue my google searches I found nothing at the Sunday Sport, a lot at the Daily Mail, Mirror, and Daily Express of course, a lot at the Times (but less since I quit) and Telegraph and Guardian and the following solitary piece at the Daily Star which I got by searching my name on their site.
It tells you what I, my colleague and wire service photographers get up to on bad news days with a ball of string, a touch of glue, a toy vehicle, and any animal we find around the garden.
