A week ago Saturday, YouTube viewers on Hampstead hoax promoter Matt Taylor’s channel were treated to the spectacle of the Sussex police banging on Taylor’s door and attempting to arrest him.
Taylor refused them entry, and after a long and highly entertaining back-and-forth which included Taylor calling 999 and claiming “fake police” were attempting to “kidnap” him (shades of Neelu!), eventually a compromise was reached: he was to appear at the police station the following Monday, 23 September, at 5:00 p.m.
Monday came and went with no word from Taylor—unusual given his tendency to bleat publicly about his every fart and whistle—and while we heard a few rumours that he had been arrested, we could find no official confirmation, and thus refrained from reporting.
Pull the other one
On Tuesday, 24 September, Taylor posted a picture of the Storr on the Isle of Skye, claiming that he was in the “Scottish Highlands” and commenting, “Sussex police will never find me here, hehehe”.
Odd that he could somehow afford to flee Brighton for Scotland, when only a couple of days earlier he’d been telling the police he could not afford bus fare to the police station a couple of miles away, but whatever.
There followed a string of videos of ever-increasing bizarreness.
On 25 September, Taylor sang-boasted, “I’m free…to do what I want…any old time”, and “you will never catch me!”
In a second video released that day, billed as a “Matt Taylor Arrest Up-date”, he stated:
How can I put it delicately? I’m going to do everything in my powers to resist arrest, and as I have said, I had no intention of going up to the police station at 5:00 p.m.So what happened was this, okay, I’ll tell you what happened. I was walking out of my house at 5:45 on Monday. An unmarked police car pulls up beside me and says, ‘Matthew Taylor, get in the car’.
And it doesn’t end with a talking police car.
According to Taylor, he fled the police on foot, and somehow managed to make his way to Scotland, with the police in hot pursuit. Fortunately for him, a passing alien spacecraft picked him up and flew him to the Moon. Yes, he really says this. No, he is not seven years old. We think.
In subsequent videos last week he alternately claimed to be hiding out from the Sussex police (and their talking vehicle) on the International Space Station, and then Antarctica. (He also posted a long shaggy-dog story about how he shit his pants whilst on a trip to Washington DC, and somehow managed to get into FBI headquarters and leave his soiled underpants in a toilet there. Aren’t you glad we watch these videos so you don’t have to?)
Finally, on Saturday, Taylor made a brief, blink-and-you’ll-miss-it confession: in a video titled “Sussex Police have sabotaged my election campaign, again!”, he claimed to be a victim of police corruption. Nothing new there, but…
“They misused their powers to sabotage my 2015 and 2019 election campaigns”, he says. And at 0:54, “In 2019 they arrested me for harassment—with intent of violence”.
Now we’re getting somewhere.
Given these titbits of information, it sounds as though Taylor was indeed arrested last week, probably under Section 4 of the Protection from Harassment Act 1997.
This is the charge on which Rupert Quaintance was found guilty in 2017, and consists of “a course of conduct which causes another to fear that violence will be used against him, and the defendant ought to know that his course of conduct will cause another to fear that violence will be used against them….”
Two further videos, posted to YouTube on Sunday, offer a bit more detail: “A charitable appeal to replace the IT equipment stolen by Sussex police” tells us…well, you get the picture.
Police, arrest, IT seized for examination. Taylor putting out the begging bowl. No mention of Scotland, aliens, the ISS, or Antarctica. [Or poo bombs, thank Christ—Ed.]
Curiously, at one point in this video, a devil’s head appears, glowing red eyes and all, behind the question, “Who is @laughingdevil1?”
According to Google, this is the name of a Twitter user who describes themselves thus: “Fighting Antisemitism. Investigative Journalist behind labour antisemitism map.”
What this has to do with Taylor’s arrest and tech confiscation, we do not know.
In a second video yesterday, titled “Matt Taylor Arrest Update #2“, Taylor returns to his Scotland/aliens/Moon/ISS/Antarctica story, and claims that it was “UK Callum who was feeding Sussex police my secret locations”:
Only God knows who this bloody UK Callum is, isn’t he, eh? He must be a police informant! He must be a special witness, I reckon.
Gosh, if we didn’t know better we might think that was a veiled reference to the Hampstead dad, who Taylor has accused of being associated with this blog. Wonder why he didn’t just come out and say the name, though? Could it be that Taylor’s bail conditions prohibit the naming of certain individuals?
In summary, we think it’s safe to say that Taylor was indeed arrested last Monday on suspicion of harassment causing fear of violence; that the police removed his computer, phone, and other tech equipment for examination; that Taylor is currently on bail; and that his bail conditions forbid him from mentioning the name of the person he is suspected of harassing.
We really don’t know why he couldn’t have just come out and said all that in the first place.
