Gyles Brandreth has spoken candidly about how he staged an intervention to talk Clegg into rehab for his addiction to trolling on internet chat rooms. In a center page article in the Daily Mail, Gyles revealed the harrowing tale of seeing Nick descend into a personal hell of random abuse on little known chat rooms, insulting up to forty readers a day at the height of his addiction. “Once he took on one of his online personalities he became another person, vicious and unhinged, like a monkey on skates on drugs” said Brandreth.
“Nick was a wild man, totally out of control” explained Gyles. “After a long day in coalition being kicked around by Cameron, Grilled on The today Program, mocked on satirical comedy shows, and sworn at by LibDem members he would retreat into his study with a four pack of Tennents Super, close himself off, and begin a tirade of personal abuse at any passing random that he came across on his late night internet sessions."
A trawl of web sites, not at all carried out by a dubious private investigator using a range of illegal hacking tools, has revealed a number of Clegg’s possible rants. On one site he is alleged to call a contributor “A talentless baboon, devoid of all human reasoning” in a spat over the outcome of that week’s “Strictly come Ballroom”. Vince Cable has so far not commented. On another site dedicated to Green issues, Clegg could possibly have been behind the comment “If you like wind farms so much then why don’t you stick a turbine up your a*se and generate some energy to offset the diesel used to grow all that Soya, Mung Bean muncher”. Speaking on the subject of tuition fees, someone who quite possibly was not Nick Clegg told a troubled student who was worried about tuition fees “Seeing as you know it all already then why don’t you stop sponging off your parents, get a job and move to the real world?”
Writing under the pseudonym "thefag", Clegg could possibly have gone on to write material for Andrew Mitchell. Certainly some classic lines such as "Best you learn your f*cking place. You don't run this f*cking government ... You're f*cking plebs." when talking to a police officer bear the hallmarks of someone deep in the mire of a late night strong lager binge, but that is mere supposition.
Matters came to a head when Gyles spotted a post on his own website and recognised the style. “Straight away I contacted Nick and we arranged to meet in a House of Commons bar. He broke down, admitted what he had been doing and asked for help”. Following Clegg’s moment of clarity, Gyles says that Nick is off the internet and knitting him a jumper as a displacement activity.
