Absolute nightmare for Telegraph’s young reporter Dominic Penna after he tweeted that the BBC’s political editor, Laura Kuenssberg, had performed a duet with Michael Gove at the now-infamous Tory Karaoke event. This triggered Twitter’s TrotsApp crowd mightily, given their unswerving and unjustified belief that Kuenssberg is a closet Tory…
As the BBC press office was quick to point out, the tweet was eventually deleted. Conspiracists will tell you that is exactly how establishment cover-ups work – some still insist a video exists. The truth is more mundane.
There but for the grace of God go all of us who tweet, unfiltered and unedited single-sourced reports. Guido understands it was it a drunken, perhaps mischievous, tipster who gave the credulous young reporter a bum steer. With the result that this morning’s Telegraph politics email* has issued a curt non-apologetic retraction:
Laura Kuenssberg
Party conferences pass in a blur. Contrary to my report yesterday from INHouse karaoke. Laura Kuenssberg did not have a dance-off and rap battle with Cabinet minister Michael Gove.
The BBC political editor was there, and chatting to people on the edge of the dance floor, with hundreds of other people. But no shapes were thrown with disco-loving Govey.
Why the idea that a rap duet of Vanilla Ice’s classic “Ice, Ice, Baby” was credible and went viral escapes Guido. Perhaps it was because strange things happened at the Tory Karaoke, like Lewis Goodall crooning “Dancing Queen”:
Guido was safely tucked up in bed, so was spared that…
