Trending in New Zealand: Clarke Gayford.

What is nuttier than a fruitcake? Nuttier than a large jar of extra-smooth extra-nutty Pic’s peanut butter? From the sort of deranged minds that brought you, and believed, the tales of Hillary Clinton running a paedophile ring from the basement of a pizzeria – ladies and gentlemen – the “Where is Clarke Gayford” crowd.

They have all sorts of wild theories with absolutely no evidence. The affair with the nanny, the class ‘A’ drugs, the court cases, the break-up, and of course the myriad sightings around the country. Bizarrely they will accept them as all being accurate even though often mutually exclusive and it not being physically possible that they could all be true.

You’ll see the comment “Where’s Clarke?” on posts on our more deranged news platforms, hello Newstalk ZB. Thirty people will have used the ‘like’ emoji or the ‘hee-haw’ one for seemingly no reason other than admiring the brilliance or wit of that comment.

But these random comments are beginner stuff. The more hardcore aficionado of Clarke location based theories has their own dedicated page, imaginatively titled “Where is Clarke Gayford?”

This page has 22,500 members and the mission statement “we want the truth about the sudden disappearance of glamour boy!” For any of you who may be under the illusion that the members here are merely sleuths who like a good mystery, or who retain any belief in humanity - “abandon all hope ye that enter here” would have made a more accurate ‘About’ description for the page.

Here is the first post I saw, as it turns out one of the more articulate examples from the page, demonstrating the thorough understanding of logic the person posting has:

“I have been thinking about the missing Clarke thing for a bit now.

And the Nanny thing

And the Tredau being the childs father..

It made me realise, how sad she must be to either

A) if these allegations are true, how sad her personal life must be. And what a poor role model she is

B) if these allegations are false, how much people despise her to come up with these plausable stories, but how scared she is of the public, so cannot address these issues publically

Either way it shows her weakness as a leader.“

People responded with comments on that post like:

“I think it must be downright awful.. To be the most despised.. hated.. Laughed at.. Individual in NZ.. Poor Jacinda.. Whatever did you do to deserve that!”

“I did here he was born a girl. Flipped like these globalist roll. Her birth father also meant to Federal Castrol frm Cuba!! Cindy birth father Jacob Rothchild...if u see a pic of J Rothchild very similar...”

“I have never in my life time ever known of a prime minister who could not walk the streets safely …..yet here we are ……Jacinda wake the fuck up …..people don’t like you, don’t trust you, your reign of terror in NZ is over”

Ugh, enough of that.

In the past we had the make believe drug charges Clarke was supposedly facing. A rumour that spread so widely the police felt compelled at the time to issue a statement clarifying that it was bullshit.

That was in May 2018, and they again had to issue the same type of statement yesterday clarifying that Clarke “is not and has not been the subject of any police inquiry, nor has he been charged in relation to any matter”

Weirdly when the rumours are shown to be blatantly false it doesn’t discourage them at all. There could be photos of Jacinda and Clarke getting married all over the media, it wouldn’t dissuade them in the least from saying the wedding was in fact cancelled and never took place.

I mean who are you going to believe - the media when they say he has been there the whole time doing everyday mundane things? The police who claim he has not ever been charged?

Or a guy your brother in law’s builder met down at the service station who said he’d seen Clarke going into the back of a district court wearing an ankle bracelet? At the very same time your neighbour’s cousin’s hairdresser saw him in the Spring Hill corrections facility?

So where dear reader, where can Clarke be? Is he hiding in plain sight? Is he hiding at the bottom of the enormous fiscal hole in National’s latest plan?

What else has been up, what other crimes will he be blamed for, was he on the grassy knoll?

Perhaps to help with their crusade we could provide the conspirators with a version of Where’s Wally? Each page filled with a photo of a well-known location and Wally, I mean Clarke, half the size of the page in a bright striped sweater as the reader sighs - no one will ever solve this and turns to the next page.

Of course no one took any interest in John Key’s partner whereas Helen Clark’s partner also came under attack. Is that because Key was a man? Ardern is left wing? Clarke has a career of his own?

So who are these people that feel compelled to make absurd claims and post photos of the PM’s partner, and more disturbingly their child, with the nastiest bile you can imagine?

They call the Prime Minister “Cindy”, or “horse face” of course and their mum is the only woman they will ever love, the misogynist knuckle dragging sociopaths. Their page contains the sort of lewd woman-hating sexual comments that you’d expect from a year 10, a fourth former, writing on the wall of a toilet cubicle, one who is destined to end up with a protection order against them.

Then there are the responses to the posts, comments praising the original post, high fiving each other, be it a plainly idiotic accusation or a terrible piece of photo shopping the PM or Clarke’s head onto another picture, usually a horse for the former, as being the absolute height of genius.

You’ll know some of them; they’ll be in your community, you’ll spend money at their businesses – sure you want to do that?

When I went to the page I saw I had a “friend”, someone who used to be our neighbor, our kids went to school together, who is a member – yikes! I’m guessing she doesn’t read my posts.

Weirdly there are a lot of woman on this woman-hating page. Nominally it is about Clarke but in reality the page is all all about belittling and hating Jacinda. Some have jobs like “Organiser and coordinator at Teddy Bears Picnic Kapiti”. Remember kiddies if you go down to the woods today you’re in for a BIG surprise! I’m sure Suzy Cato never told stories like these!

So what do we do with these people? I reckon Clarke has the right idea if you saw his tweet yesterday asking if anyone had seen he and Clarke Gayford in the same room at the same time before.

Laugh at them, mock them, use their own words to show people how nuts the things they are saying are. And for goodness sake lets call them on the misogynist bullshit – who speaks like that?