I have often pondered why the cliché is ‘descending into madness’ – given the number of people who end up firmly believing that they are the son of the Man upstairs, and spend the rest of their life with arms outstretched and tending their goatee beard, having moved from ‘talking to themselves’ to believing that they are in fact God, or at least JC – without passing ‘Go’. Surely the cliché should be ‘Ascending to Insanity’?

What is the alchemy by which so many people end up convinced by the same fantasy? I have just caught up with a documentary on James Randi – available for another six days on iPlayer, and I cannot recommend it highly enough – utterly enthralling to anyone interested in how and why people not only become consumed by irrational beliefs, but that so many people become consumed by the same beliefs – without ever meeting each other. Randi’s thesis (very roughly!) boils down to a view that people ‘believe what they need to believe, though they think they ‘chose’ what to believe’. Randi describes replicating Uri Geller’s spoon bending trick and revealing it to be part of the Magician’s arsenal of trickery – ‘Geller Believers’ accused him of having psychic powers himself and ‘being in denial’…I was promptly reminded of the time I was accused of having ‘buried’ the ‘traumatic’ occasion on which Savile abused me in a Duncroft dormitory in 1965….it being ‘unbelievable’ to a ‘true believer’ that when I said he simply wasn’t there – that he simply wasn’t there!

Suddenly, our world is full of people who have just realised they were abused in childhood by a celebrity – and there’s not a spoon bender in sight. Vanished, the lot of them. Mind you, there aren’t too many people abducted by aliens around at the moment, either. Each of these ‘beliefs’ have their own lingo – and it is extraordinary how quickly people catch onto the new lexicon. I watched a documentary on Broadmoor too (part two tonight!) and marvelled at how, even incarcerated in there for 25 years, the Thesaurus of abuse had penetrated. Elderly patients now claim to have been ‘groomed’ in childhood, ‘plied’ with alcohol – nobody ever admits to having shoplifted alcohol any longer, or lied to get into a pub underage, as we used to – nope, they now remember they were ‘plied with alcohol’ by sinister older figures – and I wonder how much of this can be accounted for by an instinctive understanding of the lexicon that well meaning counsellors ‘need to believe’.

Before I had time (or rather inclination, let’s be honest here) to put pen to paper – along came Michael Shrimpton QC. What can I say? Wow! Put’s Andrea Davison in the shade.

I first came across Michael when I had the misfortune to be moderating a ‘Madeleine McCann’ forum. Michael managed to pip Mark Williams-Thomas to the Madeleine bandwagon with his seminal INTEL/INFO:

“In my report to the joint of intelligence committee, in the case of Madeleine McCann, She was going to be abused by a senior member of the European commission in Brussels whose name is known to British Intelligence, I can’t identify him in Spyhunter but I know who it is, there is no way that Madeleine could ever be returned alive to her family because the danger would be even at her tender age of 4 she would recognise him and know who was abusing her. So the Germans had to murder her and indeed they eventually did sadly in December 2008”

Strange how the same people pop up time and time again in different conspiracy theories. I ran into quite a few old ‘acquaintances’ from the height of Madeleine hysteria, the Hollie Grieg hoax, Common Purpose, et al as I researched Michael’s ‘ascendancy’ to hallowed high priest of the child abuse clique and honoured guest and Guru for David Icke. These people must watch ‘Google trends’ like a hawk, and at the first sign of a word trending, formulate a theory full of buzz words like ‘cell’, ‘disinformation’, ‘intelligence operative’, and of course, the ever popular ‘plied’ and ‘grooming’. I’m amazed that none of them latched onto the Oscar Pistorius story, he could have been groomed by South African Intelligence, jailed so that he could be ‘terminated with prejudice’ and never reveal the presence of nuclear weapons removed from the Kursk when it sank, and, and, and….

Too late, Mark Williams-Thomas had already latched onto the Pistorius family…you have to be quick in this game.

Michael had been at full pelt while the media were interested in the London Olympics: he phoned a secretary at the Aylesbury Conservative Association – as you do when you are a self proclaimed ‘intelligence expert on national security’ – and patiently explained to her that German intelligence, which is ‘now in control of Al Qaeda’ was quietly steaming up the Thames in a submarine loaded with nuclear weapons removed from the Kursk, etc, etc,

‘The information was extraordinary and dramatic, in essence Mr Shrimpton announced that a nuclear weapon stolen from the sunken Russian submarine the Kursk a number of years ago, that such a nuclear weapon had been smuggled into the UK and was being stored in a London hospital in preparation to be used during the Olympic games.

He followed this up with calls to the Defence Secretary Philip Hammond to say that this ‘ere nuclear warhead had been stashed in an east London hospital…

His defence case statement filing is a joy to read…if you are behind in your study of current buzz words, do catch up – he has managed to work every single current conspiracy theory in there…but yesterday, our ‘corrupt judiciary’ (every conspiracy theorist knows that our judiciary is corrupt -and, er, Michael should know, ‘cos he used to be a judge…) sent him off for psychiatric evaluation before passing sentence on a charge of ‘communicating false information’. Will he end up in Broadmoor? He will certainly liven up that august establishment, and join forces with the ‘groomed’ and plied’ inhabitants of child abuse fantasy land – oh, did I mention that Michael is already on the sex offenders register? Framed by the Secret Service, see.

No surprise to find that he was at university with Meirion Jones, Child Abuse Exposer Extraordinaire….

Knew Michael Shrimpton (Guilty Nuclear Bomb hoax) http://t.co/I2MWraxwwL since Cardiff he genuinely believes fantasist not deliberate hoaxer

— Meirion Jones (@MeirionTweets) November 25, 2014

Indeed – Meirion was Editor of the University Paper, and Michael was President of the Union back in 1980… The same people pop up time and time again….

See, I was planning to write a piece yesterday about the latest Labour initiative about ‘Tory toffs’ and top public schools, and how Labour were going to remove their charitable tax relief if they didn’t start lending their best teachers to state school, and Harrods didn’t send their highly paid staff to stand behind the counter in Poundland, ‘cos it was all so unfair – if you went to a top school like Colet Court or St Paul’s School you ended up as Chancellor of the Exchequer or leader of the Liberal Party automatically and this was just an unfair advantage in life – only I couldn’t, because it just isn’t true.

You can go to Colet Court or St Paul’s School – and end up as Editor of the University Paper, or in the left luggage cupboard at Panorama, a left wing firebrand, part of the Labour fringe determined to expose those Tory toffs with all the advantages in life – just like Meirion Jones – who went to Colet Court and St. Paul’s and didn’t become Chancellor of the Exchequer.

But then he did get to meet Mark Williams-Thomas, who is busy ‘passing information to Operation Whateverthelatestnameis’ on the child abuse that took place at Colet Court and St Pauls’….

Stop! Stop! For pity’s sake Stop!

My head is reeling – how many of these people know each other?

Coming soon – Williams-Thomas reports on D-notice issued in respect of Meirion’s latest oeuvre on German submarine seen heading up the Thames in the direction of Duncroft piloted by Andrea Davison, carrying Shrimpton to safety with ISIS. Emily Thornberry resigns after accidentally tweeting picture of Pistorius carrying luggage holding Clegg bound and gagged and padlocked….

It’s got to the point where you can’t write anything without one of these nutters popping up in the story.

Edited by Anna to add: It seems that Michael is not a QC – though was a judge….I have now established that by following several more links including one where he was hired by the venerable Lord Christopher Monckton – who is the only Lord that the House of Lord’s have ever had to post on their web site a public note asking him to desist from describing himself as ‘sitting in the House of Lords’ after he appeared on an Australian TV show denying he was Sacha Cohen…

Well, actually the ‘Not sitting in the House of’ Lords Monckton was interviewed by Adam Spencer, following his hiring of the ‘Not QC’ Shrimpton about the ‘Not Nationalised’ Rannoch to Glasgow railway line which is now the only railway line in the world required to run – by law…

Are you sure you’ve got all that? Yes? I can climb out of this rabbit hole now? Personally, I’d sentence the whole lot of them to run the ‘Not Child Abuse Tribunal’.

Good. Now enjoy Lord Monckton attempting to prove that he’s not Sacha Cohen either…..