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CHARLES Firth's wife is an intelligent, serious-minded type, studying for a PhD at New York's Cornell University.
Firth, a founding member of the AFI-winning Chaser team, describes himself as her "handbag", and had to find something to busy himself with in the US while she studied.
And so he decided to take the piss. Firth invented five characters and sent them out into the cyber world.
Edward McGuire was a conservative economist, Bertrand Newton a left-leaning ad exec, Dr Andrew O'Keefe a national security expert, Darryl Summers a working-class barman and Khorin al-Ghrant a deaf Muslim poet.
Firth offered them up as bloggers and expert commentators, polishing his American accent when it became necessary to meet people.
The results are contained in his new book American Hoax, a format Firth describes as "reality fiction".
"It's a new genre. I will be very surprised if...