What if they held a coup and nobody noticed?

How to sum up the past couple of days, following the deportation of would-be king Hoani John Wanoa, who seems to have set up semi-permanent residence on a bench at Hong Kong International Airport?

Andy Devine, who at first seemed downcast by the utter balls-up of their grand plans for world domination, seemed to collect himself fairly quickly. He decided that their abject defeat was actually a stunning victory, and spent Thursday live-streaming on Facebook from St James’s Park, repeating his usual mantra: “It’s about the facts. The facts are the facts and we’ve all been lied to. But its facts that is about and we’ve got the facts on our side…because the facts can’t be undone by the fiction, because they’re the facts….” and so on and so forth, ad infinitum.

There was a speech from Wanoa—well, there were two, but on the first he forgot to switch on the sound, and so blathered on for about 45 minutes in welcome silence.

The second attempt, when it came, was broadcast via Devine’s mobile phone to the gathered crowd of at least 15 people, most of whom seemed bored witless but happy to enjoy the sunshine.

At one point Lee Cant, who’d donned a suit and combed his hair for the occasion, read out a bunch of freeman on the land woo and made a judgment against a judge he claimed had wronged him in some way. He volunteered to continue with 20 more such “cases”, but Devine wisely demurred.

Oh, and did we mention the police officer who appeared early in the day to let Devine know that it was illegal to hang flags from trees in a royal park? At first Devine was convinced that the officer was on board with the whole “new king” thing, but when the police reappeared later to write out a summons for having ignored the earlier warning, he was a bit less sanguine. Apparently, claims that the flag would protect him had been a bit overstated.

Ah well, lose some, lose some more.

Day 2, post-coup

Friday morning Devine was back at it, live-streaming from Westminster. Guest appearances were made by a number of familiar faces: Araya Soma, Jake Clarke, Edgar John (aka Eddie Isok), and others turned up.

Devine, however, was not having a good day.

First, Gary Clarke (no relation to Jake), one of the Pendragons who has been less than impressed with Devine of late, showed up, ostensibly to make a citizen’s arrest and haul Devine in for…being himself? We weren’t certain what the actual charges were. In any case, the arrest fizzled quickly, to our disappointment.

Gary Clarke

A bit later, a woman named Charmaine Mulligan approached Devine in person, and informed him in no uncertain terms that he was a complete wanker for having shared images of children relating to the Hampstead SRA hoax—sentiments with which we heartily agree.

Dear Andy: Gordon wants a divorce

However, while Devine was busy droning on about facts and being correct and his usual meaningless drivel, Jo-Anne Sollis fired a shot across the bow of the good ship Wackadoo, in the form of a message from Gordon Bowden:

We were following along reasonably well until we got to the bit about Lee Cant being the appointed Ambassador of AUSTENASIA, but a bit of poking about on the interwebs revealed all.

Okay, no it didn’t. Instead, we found this:

The Embassy of the Empire of Austenasia to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the unaccredited diplomatic mission of the Empire of Austenasia to the United Kingdom and base of operations for the Austenasian Ambassador to the United Kingdom.

The current embassy was claimed on 6 February 2017, replacing a former embassy which had been claimed from September 2015 to June 2016. Both have been in areas of London, capital of the United Kingdom.

Austenasia claims diplomatic immunity and extraterritoriality for its embassies, which – although unaccredited – are therefore administered by the Chief Ambassador rather than under British law.

The United Kingdom does not officially recognise the Empire of Austenasia, and has not therefore accredited or publicly acknowledged its embassies. The Embassy therefore serves a primarily ceremonial purpose.

And furthermore, this:

The current Second Embassy of Austenasia to the United Kingdom is located at 7 Barclay House, Well Street, Hackney Central, and is comprised of a ground-floor residence of a block of flats. It is the home of the incumbent Ambassador to the United Kingdom, Lee Cant, who was appointed such on 4 February 2017. His residence was claimed as the Second Embassy two days later, on 6 February.

The Second Embassy of Austenasia

Your guess is as good as ours.

So, roughly translated, it sounds as though Bowden was telling Devine that his king is shit, his business is a scam, and if he wants his £20,000 back, he can whistle for it.

Devine responded by calling Bowden a scammer, and claiming that he’d taken that £20,000 under false pretences, and there was much sabre-rattling about exposing people and people exposing themselves and so forth. We don’t really mind if it’s between consenting adults and they don’t frighten the horses, but if it’s all the same to everybody, we’d prefer not to be around when it happens. Some things, once seen, cannot be unseen.

Will Devine be back live-streaming tomorrow? Will King Crusty still be camped out in the Arrivals area of Hong Kong Airport? Will Bowden ever give back that £20,000? Stay tuned….