While most political journalists have sizable egos, some are more careful to hide it than others; this week The New Statesman’s Harry Lambert is winning plaudits for a feature on the Labour Party’s 20 year-long decline, though it appears he’s been even busier writing something else: his own Wikipedia profile. 

A keen-eyed Twitter user recently spotted that Lambert’s page was created by an account called Blueriverrock29, an account that exclusively contributed to; Harry Lambert’s page, Jenni Russell’s page – Harry’s journalist mum, Stephen Lambert’s page – Harry’s media executive dad, and to add Harry references to other Wikipedia pages, including Dominic Cummings’s. Blueriverrock29 has now been deleted…

Shortly after, a new account, called BlueRiver472, added the picture of Harry to the profile, describing it as their “own work” in copyright terms. Perhaps most peculiar among the edits was the inclusion by Blueriverrock29 of the ego-boosting claim from Iain Dale that Lambert is “a new star in political journalism”. Peculiar due to the citation being a two-year-old Tweet – not something that’s usually accepted as a reliable source by Wikipedia’s citation policy…

Unfortunately for Harry, once you have a Wikipedia profile, it’s difficult to stop others from adding uncomfortable truths to it – for example your well-known, media establishment parents. In February a third party added parental information to the top of Harry’s profile, only for a new account called Eagleheights162 to remove the information, arguing it’s

“not relevant to the opening section – not what he is known for and it is not in style of Wikipedia. Known for work – reintroduced to opening section”

Who was Eagleheights162? We may never know. Though it’s interesting to note “Eagle Heights” was the address of a film company of which Harry Lambert was briefly a director…