A Lie Unchallenged Becomes the Truth

What being cancelled looks like…

Monday July 1st 2019, we had driven back to Essex after a weekend away at a Festival. I’m an artist. My fella (Doozer McDooze) is a musician, we had been living in our van and touring for seven years by that time.

That weekend Doozer had played at a small festival. This is where it all began.

Stage one of being cancelled.

On Monday evening Doozer got a text from his bandmate at the time telling him that a status had been written in a group accusing me of “assaulting” an ex-friend over the weekend, he also told Doozer not to tell me about it, and that’s where it all started.

I immediately got involved and requested the screenshots.

The screenshots:

“Chinese whispers” that phrase is like a boomerang.

When I saw these screenshots I was absolutely furious and devastated.

I felt like I couldn’t breathe. It’s hard to describe the panic and anger when an accusation like this is made.

I don’t think it needs saying, but I’ll write it here now in case clarification is wanted: These accusations are not true.

I knew Ren was annoyed at us for not being friends anymore, but I had not imagined she would go as far as to make an allegation like this.

For some context:

We knew Jules and her husband Tom as they had come to a few of Doozer’s gigs and were regulars at the festivals he played. A few years prior to this, Jules had publicly called me a “fucking disgusting piece of shit” on Facebook after I had written a status saying “Women don’t have penises”.

I unfriended Jules and Tom immediately, I never spoke to either of them again.

Jules and Tom were so infuriated by me blocking them, that they both repeatedly made this displeasure known to us by sending Doozer lengthy private messages about how I don’t have the “right” to unfriend them. So Doozer unfriended them too.

We were friends with Ren up until almost a year prior to this accusation.

When we met Ren we thought she was a good musician and that she’d do well on tour, and at festivals. So in 2017-2018 we took her on tour with us and introduced her to everyone we knew, but we soon felt like we were being taken advantage of as she then expected to be invited to all of our gigs and wasn’t happy about it if there wasn’t an invite.

There was also a few incidents that didn’t sit well with us, so we quietly cut ties and decided to move on.

Another incident set the tone in February, 2019:

A friend of mine was having a shop closing party and Doozer was invited to play.

When we got there, Ren was on stage.

We hadn’t seen or spoken to each other in 9 months.

Whilst on stage, Ren shouted at me and berated me for wearing shorts on a cold day, she shouted “OH MY FUCKING GOD WHY ARE YOU WEARING SHORTS WHAT THE FUCK IS WRONG WITH YOU” called me a “fucking stupid cunt” from on the stage in-front of an entire audience of people I personally knew. As soon as she finished her final song she packed up and left without saying a word to anybody else.

I was humiliated and everybody around me was stunned.

Later that day, I texted Ren about it.

I did not respond.

Back to the accusation, July 2019:

In another message to our friend, Jules also went on to describe how her husband Tom, alongside their friends Brian and Graham had been so angered upon hearing the accusation they had actually got together to search for me at the festival in order to “have a word” with me about it.

I have no idea what this actually means, but it has haunted me to think of what would have happened if I had been approached by a handful of 50+ year old men to “have a word” with me. Luckily, I was never alone at any point during the festival, which might be why I was never approached by these men.

With that being said - On Sunday I was approached by Brian, he was by himself.

Brian was walking past our van, I was sitting in the van talking to my friend.

He suddenly caught my eye as he walked past, he turned around, walked back and furiously stormed into my van, uninvited and with his fist up at me. 

Once he was in the van he saw my friend behind the door, quickly backed down, turned his back to me, then refused to look at or talk to me while he made benign small talk with my friend for a few minutes, he then left the van without saying a single word to me.

I had no idea what this was about, so I was confused and quite shaken up by it, I tried to tell myself that maybe I was misreading the situation. My friend assured me that I had not.

Tuesday 2nd July 2019:

At the time of the accusation I was on a Facebook ban for posting a meme.

After a lot of overnight discussion regarding what to do about the accusation, Doozer and I decided to write a status together, to clear my name, on his personal facebook account.

I wanted to report it to the police, personally. However, I was repeatedly advised by friends that I’d be better off writing a public statement to everyone we know, because this is not a police matter.

In hindsight I wish I had just posted all of the screenshots of the accusations too, I should have just aired it all out from the start. I now do not believe the claims that you should “take the high ground” and “just ignore them” because these accusations have followed us for years. And that’s part of what being cancelled is all about. It is using anything as a weapon to repeatedly destroy your life with.

Here’s the status we posted:

Unfortunately, someone did defecate on our doorstep. It was the side door, which isn’t the commonly used one. We had put a table up against it the day before because we decided not to use the side door and use the back door of the van instead. The table had been moved. This made it seem personal, as the toilets were not far from us at the festival and they were well lit up. A lot of effort had to be made to go to our side door and move the table out of the way in order to do that, and we think it had to be someone who knew our van well and assumed we were using the side door.

Everyone at the festival that weekend was convinced it was a “dirty protest” because no dogs were allowed at this festival (and we all know what human faeces looks like) and there were rumours of “bad blood” between us and Ren, which was surprising to me and Doozer because neither of us had ever said a word about Ren to anybody in the year leading up to this. We had not had a falling out, we just quietly moved on from the friendship and didn’t talk about it to anybody else, hoping that Ren would move on and do her own thing.

Within minutes of the status being posted, Doozer (Paul) received a private message from Brian Stone.

Suddenly, the incident with Brian storming into my van with his fist up made sense. But why he was doing this did not make any sense.

Brian also told Paul that he knows I attacked Ren, that we had a “shouting match which turned into something else, then something else”

Brian went on to later change his story and told Paul that Ren hadn’t accused me of anything at all, that he, Brian, had just made it up to be spiteful.

At this point, Doozer stopped replying to Brian.

Shortly after this exchange, Jules sent Doozer a private message which he did not reply to.

Until this point, I had no idea Ren had been telling people I was “bullying” her.

In hindsight, I can now piece it all together, and I suspect she had been telling people things like this the entire time of our friendship.

You might all have noticed by now, that not one person is talking to me or contacting me about this.

This is how it’s been for five years so far. Everything that I’m accused of goes public and it goes around me. No one ever speaks to me personally about it.

While this was all happening, Ren also privately messaged Doozer and then blocked him immediately:

“Chinese whispers”

During the festival, hours after the “dirty protest”, I was at a packed out gig on the second stage with my friends. I went to the bar to buy a round, and Ren appeared out of nowhere. She stood next to me staring at me intensely. So, after uncomfortably paying for my round, with drinks in my hand - as I walked away I said “If you ever want to tell us what we’ve done wrong, you’re always welcome to chat”.

I’m wondering if this is what is meant by “had a pop at me”

The evolution of this quick word in passing has been strange.

Here’s the stories I’ve heard about it:

“Birdy and Ren exchanged words and things got out of hand, one thing led to another and then it led to something else”

“Birdy saw Ren, screamed at him and pushed him over”

“Birdy grabbed Ren by the throat in the middle of the gig, and was screaming in Ren’s face”(This is my favourite story as it implies that this could happen and no-one would intervene).

“Birdy found Ren alone and beat him up”

“Birdy ran up behind Ren and pushed him over then stood over him screaming”

“Birdy found Ren, started pushing him and screaming at him and then Ren pushed back and they had a fight”

Not long after this message was sent from Ren, Graham Parker also chimed in.

Doozer did not respond.

The public response to our status was also interesting:

“Chinese whispers” makes another appearance.

This is part one of my cancellation.

The news of the accusation and how things played out after we posted the status trying to refute the accusation completely blindsided us.

People unfriended me, they blanked me at gigs, they didn’t want anything to do with me after this accusation.

People stopped buying my art overnight and they were blocking me on social media then publicly announcing that they were burning my paintings, throwing my art in the bin and selling artwork they previously bought from me.

It was absolutely shocking.

After living off my art for seven years, I had to get another job to make up for the loss of income until the Covid pandemic and lockdowns came… which is when the second cancellation happened.

In December 2020 I had reached out to Graham Linehan and asked me to come onto his podcast to talk about what was happening to me, so I discussed the first cancellation there.

This was my first time ever speaking publicly about it. I was so nervous, but ever since then I’ve been vocal while processing everything and getting stronger as time goes on.

Thank You Graham, for helping me take the first step.

After the episode aired, Jules went into the comments on YouTube to call me a liar (the comments are still there), and then she repeatedly made public appeals on facebook, tagging other musicians we know for someone to please contact Doozer and urge him to tell the truth about me and expose me publicly.

We did not respond to these appeals.

Shortly after that, Ren sent me a private message and then immediately blocked me.

This accusation of assault comes up again and again over the years.

To this day no one who was involved in this has ever publicly or retracted this accusation or apologised for it. I lost my income because of it. This accusation affected both of us enormously. The stress was incredible and it had a severe impact on my health.

People we had known for years wanted nothing to do with me. They would still go to Doozer’s gigs but they would not even look at me or speak to me. Not one person has ever asked for my side of the story, or even wondered if any of the stories they have heard are actually true. It has been made clear to us that the accusations of “bullying” made by Ren had actually started as far back as 2017 - when Ren was on tour with us.

Even as recently as last year, Doozer was cancelled from a Festival and claims were publicly made that I’m a danger to people because I “crossed the line by committing violence at a festival”.

So this accusation has continued to follow us around even five years later.

I had no idea that this was about to get worse.

The next time we got cancelled, was even more insane than this time.

You might be wondering what I want from writing and publishing all of this?

Well, I’ve had five years to think carefully, process, and try to heal a bit too.

Ideally, I want a public retraction.

In reality though I know that will never happen, so I just want to move on and best way for me to move on is to talk openly about what happened to me.

What I’ve learned is that you should always stick up for yourself loudly, even if it’s scary and everyone’s telling you not to, even if there’s consequences and punishments for speaking up. Even if no-one believes you. It’s always worth it.

(Unless you’re in a situation which requires legal assistance and you’re legally advised not to speak about it yet, of course).