On Wednesday on was a panellist on Up Front, internet TV station 18 Doughty Street’s daily half-hour news discussion show. It was my first time on the programme – having previously been on other Doughty Street shows – and my first time on with Conservative presenter Donal Blaney.

You can watch it in the 18DS archive here.

No time to write more than to say:

Tommy and the Weeks, 4.30pm, Pleasance Courtyard, final show is today (Monday). If you’re in Edinburgh, do go along.

I went along yesterday and it was very funny.

I’ll explain later.

I know what you’re thinking: what could be more ludicrous than the Grant Shapps “1234” affair?

Well, fans of hilariously bad attempts to use false identities online, it must be this.

First off, someone created an account on Facebook in the name of Liberal Democrat MP Norman Lamb. They then used this account to create a Norman Lamb group purporting to be from the man himself. This group was, well, rubbish. It plugged another Facebook group critical of Norman and the blog of his Tory opponent – significant signs that it wasn’t real. Having had Norman confirm this, party HQ contacted Facebook, who quickly suspended the Fake Norman’s account.

A number of people contacted the email address given in the group after it was revealed on Liberal Democrat Voice. Replies from this email account showed the internet address from which they were sent. The same address had made a number of edits to Wikipedia that were critical of Norman, indicating that the person wasn’t a fan. Despite this, a number of comments on Liberal Democrat Voice – those not trying to pin the blame on UKIP – claimed that the perpetrator was surely a Norman Lamb supporter who had innocently created the group, planning to hand it over to Norman at a later date.

And here’s where the fun begins.

It’s possible to see from the Liberal Democrat Voice logs the internet address from which these comments – apparently from eight different named people plus some anonymous ones – were posted. It looks like the person behind it didn’t realise this because (guess what?) James Becks, Charlotte Steels, Alex Solomon, Jason Anyassor, Grace Clarke, Sarah Makepeace, Mary Samson and Shane Cruise all share an internet connection. Either that’s one busy student house or someone has executed one of the most inept attempts to use false identities on the internet. To top it off, the last comment was made shortly after the sockpuppetry had been publicly revealed.

You can read summaries of the amusing and sometimes contradictory comments over on Liberal Democrat Voice.

Meanwhile, the true identity of the person who created the fake Norman Lamb Facebook account remains a mystery…

Last year, at a ceremony at party conference, Stephen Tall’s A Liberal Goes A Long Way was awarded the first Blog of the Year award for the best Liberal Democrat blog.

This year, the Blog of the Year award returns, flanked by five additional categories. The full line-up of the awards, run by the party in conjunction with Liberal Democrat Voice, is:

• Liberal Democrat blog of the year
• Best blog from a Liberal Democrat elected to public office
• Best new Liberal Democrat blog (started since 1st October 2006)
• Best posting on a Liberal Democrat blog (since 1st October 2006)
• Most humorous Liberal Democrat blog
• Best designed Liberal Democrat blog (as decided by readers of Liberal Democrat Voice)

Anyone can nominate an entry for any category, but the deadline is 31st August. There’s more information on the party website.

Excluded from nomination are blogs and posts from Ryan Cullen, Lynne Featherstone, Stephen Tall and me, as the four of us constitute the judging panel. We’ll draw up shortlists for each of the categories, and for all but the “Best designed Liberal Democrat blog” category, we’ll choose the winners.

You have just under two weeks to get your nominations in; shortlists will be published on September 5th.