See, this is why Twitter is stupid.Tweeters are out in force passing around "news" that Robin Leach is dead. I got an email a few minutes ago from a colleague asking, very creatively, whether I'd heard if he's "left this vale of tears for that big nightclub in the sky."
So I called him. And he answered the phone. Which meant...
"You're not dead!" I exclaimed.
No. It turns out some radio jockeys went into his Wikipedia entry and killed him off. But he's doing just fine.
"There certainly have been moments in my professional life when I thought I was dead," he joked.
"OK, good," I said. "So you're definitely alive?"
"Yes, this is not a recording. This is really my own voice."
And a lovely voice it is. So all you crazy Internet people with your wacky Vegas theories and conspiracies, stand down.
6 comments:
The whole *insert celebrity here* is dead thing is not unique to Twitter.
As I'm sure you know, this has happened many times on the 'Net in general.
My question is was he really banned from Delmonico's?
And even before the advent of Twitter, the Internet, and fax machines, there was a quaint old thing called a newspaper. One such publication, the New York Journal, published an account of the death of Mark Twain, whose cousin was ill. That was May, 1897. Samuel Clemens had to clear that one up himself, and he's been being misquoted ever since.
Nifty little .jpg online -- not sure if it's authentic, but it's fun, nonetheless --
http://www.twainquotes.com/Death.html
Regardless, I think I'm glad Robin Leach is still around, and I'm definitely glad that Steve's picking up the phone to verify facts!
http://www.museumofhoaxes.com/hoax/Hoaxipedia/Paul_Is_Dead/
Well before the Internet, no less Twitter.
Besides, doesn't this indict Wikipedia far more than Twitter? Or, at least, the person who first saw Leach's "death" on Wikipedia and posted it on Twitter without checking anywhere else?
Come on, Steve. You're just looking for reasons to hate Twitter. All it seems to be guilty of is being an overhyped medium that doesn't happen to serve your social networking needs.
sigh. why do you people force me to consider facts when i'm hating on something? yeesh. you'd think someone would mistake me for a reporter or something...
ok ok. sorry, twitter. i hope you can forgive me.
It's alright. You work for the Times. We're all well aware of your biases...
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