As most people know, John Smeaton's 5 minutes of fame are well and truly over. However, it seems that not everyone on Bute has realised this, and one local man in particular is persisting with emailing ridiculous, unfunny and untrue "facts" about the Glasgow Airport worker who was having a fag when he should have been loading bags onto planes, and then decided to get into a fight with some nutters.
Despite it being only borderline funny the first time someone took the old David Hasselhoff / Chuck Norris chain email and changed everything to be about Mr Smeaton (e.g. John Smeaton doesn't get wet, the water gets Smeaton), Mr Graham Garfield insists on making up more such "facts" and sending them on to his increasingly aggravated friends. One such recipient was a Mr Jamie White, who told Bute News: "some of them were a little amusing at first, but now they're just getting stupid. He sent me this one yesterday 'Al-Qaieda disbanded because John Smeaton has taken the fun out of fundamentalism,' that was just a recycling of one he sent three weeks ago that said 'John Smeaton takes the laughter out of manslaughter' - it's like he's not even trying any more. To be honest, I wish he'd just stop. Nobody cares about John Smeaton anymore, the man is just a ned who happened to get into a fight with the right people."
When asked to comment, Mr Garfield said "John Smeaton is the inspiration for Jack Bauer." When it was pointed out to Mr Garfield that Jack Bauer first appeared in 24 in 2001, long before anyone other than his parents and possibly the parole board knew who Mr Smeaton was, he replied "John Smeaton is a time traveller." We then pointed out that if Mr Smeaton was a time traveller he would surely have been able to prevent the Glasgow Airport attack happening at all. At this point, Mr Garfield ran away, but later that evening sent Bute News an email with another 56 "facts" about John Smeaton, the majority of which are either physically impossible, extremely unlikely or completely ridiculous.
Mr Smeaton was unavailable for comment, as he was busy dining out on his brief moment of glory.
