It's currently 11:04pm on Monday, December 4th, and so far 14,838 people have learned of the Mail On Sunday's cowardly bullying theft (two today).

Read what happened | Read Mil's page | Read NTK's story | Read The Register's story | Read the Mail On Sunday feature stolen from Mil's work

The latest news on the Mail On Sunday's theft of a writer's life

Your host: Jonathan (and not Mil, who's over there)

http://ThingsMyGirlfriendAndIHaveArguedAbout.com/mil_support/
E-mail Jonathan
See the original theft

"I wish ... Jonathan would grow up" - a Mail On Sunday lawyer, who probably smells of wee

5 / 3 / 2001

Article update

Britain's journalism trade paper The Press Gazette has a story in its Media Week section, Mail and MoS pay websites after breaching copyright, about the theft of Mil's material by the cowardly bullying thieves of the Mail On Sunday. In fact, the story's rather disappointing: the "named executive" they pointedly avoid naming is, of course, Jim Gillespie, editor of the Review section of the Mail On Sunday which stole Mil's work; and I've checked with Mil and it's indeed wrong to say that he agreed to take anything down. (If you look at the Mail On Sunday's letter of surrender you'll see they chance their arm and ask, but they've no power to "instruct.") Tch. Love you anyway.

And love you anyway also to the This is Local London story, despite its amusing quotation marks around "theft" (and further authentic misspelling of "Margret". Arf).

If you spot any mentions of the Mail On Sunday's cowardly bullying theft of Mil's material that I haven't yet covered, let me know. Thanks.

Jonathan

2 / 3 / 2001

Except, of course, to pass on any coverage of the Mail On Sunday's cowardly bullying theft of Mil's work, like this story from today's Media Guardian.
1 / 3 / 2001

Mil speaks!

Yes, Mil has returned from holiday after failing to die tumbling down a mountain, and has updated Things to include an amazingly polite, generously unshouty story of what happened in his Triumphant Speech of Justice, which will doubtless enrage the cowardly, bullying thieves of the Mail On Sunday after they petulantly "reserved the right" to sue Mil for defamation, even though none existed, unlike their theft of Mil's work, which did.

And that, chums, pretty much brings to an end the Mil Support page: you can now address your quizzings to the fellow himself. Once again, I'd like to thank everyone who's supported Support and generally been quite cross at the cowardly, bullying thievery of the Mail On Sunday. You're all super.

My work here is done.

Jonathan

22 / 2 / 2001
Mil wins!
Over now live to Nice Girl Hannah.

I have just received a cheque from the Mail for £1600 and a letter which says:

"Thank you for your fax of yesterday's date confirming your acceptance of John Wellington's offer of £1600 in full and final settlement of Mr Millington's claim against us for breach of his copyright and unauthorised use of his material, for which we apologise.

I trust that we can now put the matter behind us and that Mr Millington will instruct his friend to delete the defamatory material concerning Mr Gillespie from his website.

Yours sincerely

Russell Forgham
Managing Editor"

Thanks, Nice Girl Hannah. And now back to Jonathan in the studio.

So there you are, chums. After 11 days of stalling with infinite bad grace, the cowardly bullying thieves at the Mail On Sunday have apologised for stealing Mil's material. £1600 is twice the Mail On Sunday's original offer (before they decided to pay £0 and steal Mil's material instead, obviously), so it's official: crime does not pay, when you're stopped from getting away with it.

Lord knows what the final snipey aside means, as there's nothing on this site but factually accurate statements, whether about Jim Gillespie, editor of the Review section of the Mail On Sunday which stole Mil's work, or other, completely unrelated Jim Gillespies. Must be a clerical error.

Thanks for all your support. If Mil were here now, and not obliviously skiing off the roof of a chalet in a comical windmilling fashion or something, he would undoubtedly say, "I love you all," and, "Help, I've snapped my hips off."

Jonathan



Bit in the Media Guardian about the Mail On Sunday's theft of Mil's work.

Tangentially: Valiant Admin have e-mailed me to say they can't pass on the Mail's complaints because the Mail's lawyers phoned them and wouldn't put anything in writing. Not only bullying thieves then, but cowardly bullying thieves. No reply yet from yesterday's e-mail to the Mail's lawyers, but I expect they're quite busy dealing with their newspaper's theft of Mil's material.

E-mail address fixed so it sends an e-mail rather than crashing on a missing page. My idiot mistake. Sorry.
21 / 2 / 2001

Fun little bit in the Independent's Pandora section about the Mail On Sunday's theft of Mil's material (p4, bottom column), with authentic misspelling of "Margret" and everything. Hurrah!

The piece isn't in the paper's online version, but they've sportingly given permish for it to be reprinted here. Bless.

Pandora, 21/2
Connoisseurs of the ups and downs of human relations have been thrilling to the antics of the Web's first couple of bickering, Mil and Margaret. Their website, "Things my girlfriend and I have argued about" (http://homepage. Ntlworld.com/mil.millington/ things.html), has pages of beautifully observed and very funny disputes on all manner of things. From which way to drive around a circular bypass to watching Baywatch to TV remote etiquette to buying presents and including, of course, arguments about arguments. Clearly, the writer of all this, one Mil Millington, has a fan at The Mail on Sunday; last week he was called by the paper and offered some pounds 800 for the site's greatest hits. Given that Mil is currently negotiating to turn all this into a book, he politely declined. So imagine his surprise on finding word-for-word extracts, including all of the above, published on Sunday anyway. With essentially only the names of the combatants changed. But with no acknowledgement of the source, and no cash. "I'm trying to find another word besides `theft', but it is proving rather taxing," says Mil on the site. When he had the temerity to complain to the Mail's Jim Gillespie, apparently, Mil was told that the MoS has its own in-house lawyers, and the huge cost of litigation was kindly pointed out. Wiser counsels seem to have prevailed since, however: a settlement is now being negotiated.


Tangentially: even though the Mail On Sunday have absolutely no grounds to do so, I'm told they've contacted Valiant (my online host) and demanded this site be taken down for containing defamatory comments about Jim Gillespie, the editor of the Review section of their newspaper which stole Mil's material. (Still no word on their newspaper stealing Mil's work though. Tch, lawyers, eh?) I've only found out by chance, as the lawyers couldn't be bothered (and explained that they couldn't be bothered) writing to me directly. However, they have been instructed to sue me for defamation, even though there isn't any.

What will happen next?

Update (Sorry, I've been at the pictures): It's true, I've had an e-mail from Valiant Admin saying they'd received "a number of complaints" from the Mail, and had been threatened with legal action unless they removed (unspecified) "certain comments." I've politely told Valiant that the Mail are bullying thieves, and there's nothing here that isn't factually accurate, and asked for copies of the complaints. I've also e-mailed the Mail's lawyers to ask why, given they knew there's no actionable content on this site, they lied to my ISP in an attempt to shut it down, and whether they'd be writing again to Valiant to explain they were wrong and set the record straight, and if they'd be saying sorry.

Jim Gillespie organises military parades.

Jim Gillespie advocates farmyard sex.

Jim Gillespie is balding above dead, staring eyes.

Jim Gillespie endangers children.

Jim Gillespie is an unholy freak.

Yes, it's another Gallery of Gillespies update. Of course, none of these Jim Gillespies is at all connected with Jim Gillespie, the editor of the Review section of the Mail On Sunday which stole Mil's material. Thanks to Gillespie spotters everywhere. Any more? Send them in.

Jonathan

20 / 2 / 2001

Jim Gillespie menaced teenagers.

Jim Gillespie stole money from charity.

Jim Gillespie was paid by gay hedonist.

Jim Gillespie worked with children.

Hello again. Jonathan here, cross chum of Mil's. Of course, none of these Jim Gillespies is connected in any way whatever with the Jim Gillespie who edits the Review section of the Mail On Sunday which stole Mil's work. Today's episode of the Mail On Sunday's smokescreen bullying concerns the paper's in-house lawyers (which you may recall Jim Gillespie mentioned to Mil when kindly informing him how costly it would be for Mil if he took issue with the paper's theft of his material) demanding the removal of the links from Things to this site, insisting they constitute republication by Mil of the Jim Gillespie joke. (Eh?)

Curiously, at no point during the conversation did the Mail On Sunday lawyers mention their newspaper's theft of Mil's material. Maybe it slipped their minds.

Anyway, as it would be rude of me to add sections to Mil's site without his knowledge (the Mail On Sunday seem to think he's sinisterly conducting things from behind the scenes, choosing to disbelieve the fact he's out of the country on holiday, like, say, their Review section editor Jim Gillespie is), and people appear keen to keep up with the news, I've removed the joke altogether from this page in my famous spirit of generous reasonableness, so there's no possible objection for the Mail On Sunday's lawyers to make against the links, and they can perhaps return to the matter in hand, of their newspaper stealing Mil's work.

Thanks again for your messages of support, which are all being stacked in a big pile for Mil to read when he comes back. And if you know of any more Jim Gillespies (completely unconnected to the Mail On Sunday's exemplary employee, of course), or perhaps you're a Jim Gillespie yourself, do write in with a link, and I'll add you to the celebratory Gallery of Gillespies.

Jonathan

19 / 2 / 2001

As you'll know if you've come here from Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About, Mil's explanatory section has triumphantly returned. Nice Girl Hannah and her special legal friends have judged the Mail On Sunday's bullying to be groundless, so there's no reason for the story not to be reinstated. Hurrah.

I'll keep this mirror page going for the moment as a bulletin board for further news, and I'd like to thank you for your messages of support and righteous fury, which have all been passed on to Mil, except obviously he's not back from Germany yet.

Jonathan

17 / 2 / 2001

Good evening. I am not Mil. I am Jonathan, a cross chum of Mil's.

You may be wondering what's just happened, and why you're here on a site other than Mil's House of Apology. The answer is this: after the Mail On Sunday stole Mil's work and he published an explanation of why he'd no longer be updating Things My Girlfriend And I Have Argued About (ie, because the Mail On Sunday had just stolen it), the Mail On Sunday initiated proceedings to sue him for defaming their employee Jim Gillespie, editor of the Review section of the newspaper which stole Mil's site. The so-called defamation was in the form of an obvious and carefully labelled made-up joke, and the proceedings clearly a smokescreen to deflect attention from the fact the newspaper had stolen Mil's work, but there you go.

Mil was at the time (and, indeed, remains) out of contact in Germany, and, to protect his soft, wheezing bits, the whole explanation of the affair (the Mail On Sunday stealing Mil's site, you remember) was taken down.

The problem here, of course, is that anxious Things readers, and people whose interest has perhaps been aroused by the news stories in NTK and The Register can no longer see anywhere the true reason why Mil's site is no longer being updated. So I've mirrored the explanatory paragraphs here - with, passing Mail On Sunday lawyers should note, the contentious joke about Jim Gillespie removed in a spirit of generous reasonableness. What remains is factually, demonstrably accurate. (And I must just stress that Mil had nothing to do with this and is still gambolling innocently in the dewy fields of Stuttgart. Nor did Nice Girl Hannah know, but I've no idea where she gambols.)

After reading Mil's explanation, you may be interested in reading the Mail On Sunday feature stolen from Mil's work. (11/2/2001 edition, p61, if you're following at home.) I particularly like the way that people can write in to win a bottle of champagne, but forgot to suggest to Mil that he do so himself. I must appear such a fool.

But anyway.

Jonathan
February 17th, 2001

Why this page is not being updated

No, it's not because Margret and I have split up. Calm your little hearts. The reason is quite different - here's what happened....

The Mail on Sunday (which, for those of you who find yourselves foreign, is a major, tabloid, Sunday newspaper in Britain) emailed me to ask if they could use this page as a feature in their paper, offering £800 for doing so. I replied that I was very pleased they liked the page, but I had to say 'No', they couldn't use it.

The editor of the Review section, his name is Jim Gillespie, decided just to ignore my refusal and use it anyway. Without telling me. Or paying me. What they did was:

*Reprint a page-long section of it. It was almost completely cut and pasted, verbatim, into the newspaper. The only thing changed was the 'I's became 'we's, a few (crappy, unfunny and amateurish - in my opinion) connecting bits were added. The names were changed from 'Mil and Margret' to 'Colin and Karen'. (Odd that Jim Gillespie pictures me as a 'Colin', when I'm not really a 'Colin' at all, of course. Odd, because I rather picture him as a man who (Joke removed), when he's really not like that at all, of course.)

The feature was done wholly as though the clever, clever Mail on Sunday had written it. I wasn't credited or even mentioned at all, this site was not listed. I'm trying to find another word besides 'theft', but it is proving rather taxing. Before you all starting yelling 'Sue!', by the way (Tsk - I know how hot-headed you internet folk are), Mr Gillespie was helpful enough to point out that the Mail on Sunday has in-house lawyers whereas legal action would be very costly for me. For which insight, I thank him.

So, I don't really feel like putting any more of these things up, for our harmless amusement, when at any moment some tabloid editor can stroll by, copy it, claim it as his own, and stick it in his paper. Which, incidentally, people have to pay for.

Perhaps I'll change my mind, who can say. (More likely is that Jim Gillespie will point his slavering lawyers at NTL and tell them to remove this whole site - I like to think, especially as Jimmy has no case, that NTL won't cave in like a soft-boiled egg. But I'm more realistic than I am hopeful.) In the mean time, I'm off to Germany (apologies, then, for not replying to mails until I return - if you need to get in touch more pressingly, please email Nice Girl Hannah, who is my Voice On Earth).

Anyway, Bye - it's been cool.

Mil.

©; R. Millington. 2001. I mean, quite obviously, right? Yes, the title too, Bignose.

Return to Mil's page.

Read NTK's story.

Read The Register's story.

Read the Mail On Sunday feature stolen from Mil's work.

It's currently 11:04pm on Monday, December 4th, and so far 14,838 people have learned of the Mail On Sunday's cowardly bullying theft (two today).