So without further ado we the nominating committee can announce that in third place in the Press Plagiarist of the Year Awards 2005 :

Ephraim can’t be with us today as he is propping up a bar somewhere and although we have sent him a few emails, he has just been too lazy to reply. Recess Monkey, Wat Tyler, Guido and others plan to send him invoices instead of email next year.

* Runner-up, with just under a third of the votes cast was Marina Hyde, formerly the Guardian’s diarist. The little minx made good use of Google and the blogosphere to do her research. Guido noticed the similarity between some stories on the net and Ms Hyde’s, only her versions were usually published after he had noticed them elsewhere online. Then, during the U.S. election, Guido noticed that she was lifting whole concepts and themes as well as jokes from Wonkette – the sassy well known Washington D.C. blog. When her co-diarist and fellow nominee, Simon Goodley, nicked a joke verbatim from Guido it was time to act and the Press Plagiarist of the Year Awards were born. Marina’s popularity can be seen by just how many of the votes for Marina came from fellow journalists.
*Picture cut ‘n pasted (appropriately enough) from the Guardian’s own website.

Finally…

With 46% of the vote, Peter Wright, as Editor, takes the rap for the most outrageous and blatant piece of plagiarism of the year. Across two pages he cut ‘n pasted the writings of “PC Copperfield” of the Policeman’s blog. In the blogging Copper’s own words, “The Mail on Sunday never even asked… bastards“.

It was, of course, a repeat offence and we will do all we can to get justice and the award to its intended recipient.