It happened to me: I was the most hated man in the United Kingdom

The opening titles for the pretty good 2013 Ryan Gosling flick The Place Beyond the Pines had just begun when my phone started vibrating. Not wanting to spoil a fun crime caper I switched it off. Two hours of prime Gosling action later I emerged into the evening and turned the phone back on. 50 new text messages and 72 missed calls.

Huh. That’s weird.

I flicked through the messages: most of which were some variation of “YOU WERE ON THE NEWS!”, “David what did you do?!”, and “Please call me as soon as possible”. My stomach lurched like I was an elevator that had just plunged a few floors.

Let’s flash back a few hours. It’s April 8, 2013, and I’m sitting at my desk in central London. A news alert pops up that former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher has died. I’m from a South Wales mining town so was never exactly predisposed to be a fan, though her homophobia, support of apartheid and friendship with murderous dictator Augusto Pinochet (among many other things) kinda sealed the deal on my opinion of her.

Word was that on her death there’d be an impromptu party in Trafalgar Square, so I clocked off early and strolled down. Aside from the usual tourists and pigeons, not much was happening. Oh well, I guess I’d better get to that film screening. I grabbed my stuff and walked down Whitehall. Here there was a little more action, as reporters from around the world reported from outside Downing Street. As I walked past, a reporter asked me for my take. I gave it and walked away thinking, “Ha, like they’re ever going to put that on the news”.

The BBC’s Six O’Clock news that night:

Naturally, this instantly went viral. I checked out some comment sections and realized I’d booted a hornet’s nest buzzing with extremely angry right-wingers. One man said he was going to hunt me down and string me up from the Alexandra Palace transmission tower, another that he was going to beat the crap out of “this hipster”, and one that he was simply going to “nut me” (i.e. headbutt me).

Most of these comments have long been purged from the internet, but a deep delve into Twitter has some still undeleted anger:

All this meant that the trip home on public transport felt very dicey. I had just appeared on the most-watched evening news show on the day a major story broke, was still wearing the same outfit, and (if the internet was any indication) had a lot of people out for my blood. I got home without incident, though I imagined every glance my way was a prelude to a fist in my face.

By this time the clip had already gone around the world. In the States, it was played on CBS and Fox News and also aired in India, Australia, France, Germany, and Canada (and likely more that I never heard about). Later that evening there was a call-in session on talk radio station LBC about how awful I am, and how the BBC should never have aired it:

At least I wasn’t alone in my hot take:

The next day at work was awkward. I arrived to find I had a new nickname: “Citizen James” (a reference to the late 70s sitcom Citizen Smith) and I was called to my manager’s office. “David, I think you know why you’re here”. “Uh-huh”. “You’re lucky they didn’t put your name on that clip”. “Uh-huh”. “Stay away from TV cameras”. “Yes, boss.”

Less than a day later the focus had shifted elsewhere. That night there had been a mass celebration in Brixton, at which partygoers waved a banner saying “THE BITCH IS DEAD” and rearranged the letters on the outside of the Ritzy cinema to read “Margaret Thatchers dead lol”, which sucked up tabloid attention and took the heat off me.

Ten years on it’s been mentally filed away as just some weird thing that happened to me, and I guess Andy Warhol was right that everyone gets their 15 minutes of fame.

But I can still vividly remember feeling like I was going to puke when I realized what had happened, followed by a queasy paranoia that I was about to be recognized and beaten up. If there’s a lesson here it’s to maybe avoid saying anything especially incendiary to a TV news reporter and, if you’re asked for your name during a vox-pop, maybe quickly think up a pseudonym.

So, after all that, am I still glad that Thatcher’s dead?

Well yeah, duh. She was horrible.