Talk:Alex Horne

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I've removed the reference to him securing his first gig on the comedy circuit by winning a 'Cracker Joke Writing Competition'. This is because it is an in-joke by the comedian himself. Apparently he has made this claim to see if people pick up on it without further research. As such, I suspect it will be re-added at some point (maybe even referenced!), either by the well-meaning people or by people who like the in-joke. 144.32.128.14 (talk) 17:05, 1 November 2011 (UTC)

Is there any particular current reason for the flag "This biography of a living person needs additional citations for verification. Please help by adding reliable sources"? Can we help sort it out?! CursoryBethany (talk) 18:23, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

Vandalism

I couldn't help but notice that this page is very susceptible to vandalism thanks to people posting Taskmaster references like "Little Alex Horne". I'd say that it's probably a good idea to protect this page to only allow users who are at least confirmed/auto-comfirmed to edit it. Anyone agree? LeahG22 (talk) 03:45, 1 August 2019 (UTC)

I don't think it's at the point where it needs protection. Looking over the edit history from 2019, at a rough count it looks like the article is vandalised about once per month. This is not a lot of effort at all to revert, and the vandalism is being spotted quickly enough that it's not really doing any damage. All users have to begin editing pages that aren't protected to ever get an account which can edit protected pages, so we should keep as many pages unprotected as possible. — Bilorv (// W A K E U P //) 10:16, 3 August 2019 (UTC)

Spelling of middle name

I have corrected the spelling of Alex's middle name to Jeffery (rather than Jeffrey), as documented in his book, and added footnote to substantiate this. (If someone wants to add hyperlink to the mention of his book on amazon.co.uk, that is beyond my skills!) Further evidence for the spelling of Jeffery Harrison can be found for instance in the Wiki article https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sevenoaks_Gravel_Pits. CursoryBethany (talk) 16:44, 8 February 2020 (UTC)

Mention height in infobox

The infobox has a height section for a reason: if it is known about someone, even if it isn't terribly significant, it should probably be included. The 'little' joke is a part of almost every episode of the Taskmaster show, which is itself notable enough to occupy a good chunk of the lead. I myself came to wikipedia looking for this information.

There are a number of sources on his height, including a primary that was added previously (a tweet), and an entry in his IMDB page. I think this would add to the page if it were present.

User:Lord Belbury reverted a previous edit that added this: can you explain why? — Preceding unsigned comment added by Calumapplepie (talk • contribs) 21:35, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

@Calumapplepie: a small point—you need to sign talk page messages by ending them with the code ~~~~. Pinging Lord Belbury, who'll get a notification as I've mentioned their name in an edit where I add my own signature. If you look at the documentation for the infobox, Template:Infobox person, you'll see the height parameter is to be used: If person was notable for their height, or if height is relevant. If used, this should also include the year of the measurement if the person had not reached full adulthood when this stat was published. See documentation of this parameter at Template:Infobox sportsperson for more information.

IMDb is (largely) user-generated content, which makes it unreliable—I've often observed it being incorrect. A Tweet is rather dubious as the basis to source something (and Tweets are often jokes or wrong or off-hand comments that weren't designed to stand up to the scrutiny that something read 2000 times a day gets). It can possibly be acceptable for basic biographical information if there's a strong reason. But I'm not hearing one here. If his height is actually significant then which news article mentions it? Isn't the joke that he's "little", only... he isn't—so how is it relevant? Wikipedia isn't a place for indiscriminate information or even things that fans want to know. Something like this would be better suited to Taskmaster Wiki, which I created but several very diligent volunteers are responsible for the success of. The wiki gets about 5000 views per day, so people do read it. — Bilorv (talk) 22:51, 13 May 2021 (UTC)

Ack on the signing.

I pretty easily found several news articles which mention his exact height specifically (this one from The Sun, for instance: https://www.thesun.co.uk/tvandshowbiz/9718181/alex-horne-tall-height-taskmaster-horne-section/ ). As for whether or not he's little (and my perspective may be skewed on this: I'm 6'5"), I genuinely had no idea whether or not he was actually short. It's not like we see him standing up in a lineup with thirty average people and a pair of yardsticks: even if he seems to tower over one guest, that guest might just be really short. So a casual viewer of the show would likely have no idea. Plus, I don't think this needs the full notability scrutiny: its a dozen bytes, and is useful information to understanding Alex and his work.

As for the idea of lying about your height in a tweet, that doesn't make much sense to me. Right now, a person reading the article has no idea how tall he is or is not. If his height is obviously pretty large, then making an off-hand comment that seems to be correct but is actually 2" off isn't at all humorous. If his height isn't obviously fairly tall, then we should probably be telling everyone who watches the show his height.

Lastly, people trust Wikipedia in a way that they just don't trust other wiki's. If I saw a "6ft 2in" figure on the Taskmaster Wiki, I'd suspect it was a joke. Given that this is basic information about a figure, that is a pretty big part of what makes them notable, I do think it belongs on Wikipedia, and including it somewhere else doesn't give it the same exposure or the same trustworthiness. Calumapplepie (talk) 00:29, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

@Calumapplepie: The S*n (RSP entry) isn't news. I didn't say anything about "lying about your height in a tweet", so you may want to re-read what I wrote. If people trust Wikipedia it is hopefully because of our high sourcing standards (well... let me dream, okay) and this special pleading about "it's only a few bytes and I'm pretty sure it's true" is the cause of literally hundreds of BLP biographic data falsehoods that I've seen over the years. Most such falsehoods are based on something stronger than, since I checked the tweet, a literal joke by Horne about his height being 6 foot 2 according to a Google search (which is not to say that it's true or false—just that it's a joke). If you're familiar with much of his comedy you'll know he likes these statistical jokes and it's well in-character for him to say "according to the internet, [untrue thing]". He does this in Taskmaster regularly and in the Horne Section. — Bilorv (talk) 00:58, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Didn't realize the Sun was such an awful source: good to know about the context.

I wasn't trying to use the special pleading to justify FALSE information: I was using it to justify the NOTABILITY of the information. I was getting the impression that, regardless of how perfect of a source I could cite, the height: entry in the infobox would still be rejected.

I get what you're saying about this potentially being a joke: however, in order for the "according to the internet, ${lie}" joke to work, there must be some way of knowing that it is, in fact, a lie.

The problem is, if you eliminate the Sun, sites that carry the sun's articles, and a dozen oddly specific websites that cite no sources, you aren't left with anything other than his twitter feed. He's made another, much less ambiguous tweet: would this be a decent source? Calumapplepie (talk) 01:57, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

... there must be some way of knowing that it is, in fact, a lie – You're getting it the wrong way around. I don't have to prove anything. I explicitly said that I wasn't arguing whether it was true or false (I'm 90% sure it's true, on a personal level): I'm arguing that it's not provably true to the standard it can be included in Wikipedia. That Tweet is better but could still easily be a joke—if he was 5 foot 5 then he might tell everyone he's 6 foot 2 as a joke about how inordinately tall Greg is. Something is only reliable when you know the fact is true because of the source, not that you independently know it's true and find a source that says so.

I'm not playing a game with you where I argue against everything you say. If you showed me a review of Taskmaster that mentioned his and Greg's heights in relation to the "little Alex Horne" joke in Chortle, The Guardian, The Independent etc. then I'd go "yep, great, we can include it". The problem is that The S*n and "a dozen oddly specific websites that cite no sources" are wrong a significant portion of the time. (I'm guessing those dozen are the types of "Celeb Date of birth, Net worth, Height" etc. websites that fabricate almost all of their information.) You say that "you aren't left with anything other than his twitter feed", in that case. And I go back to: yes, that means we can't include it. And it means the information isn't necessary, either. Why is it worth adding the type of information I regularly see debunked as false, when none of the hundreds of reliable sources about Horne thought his height was even worth mentioning? — Bilorv (talk) 11:12, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

I was mainly going by the If person was notable for their height, or if height is relevant of infobox guidelines here. If his height is relevant to a rounded biography, the article should at least be able to say why that is: do any sources let us do that? Even the Taskmaster article doesn't mention the running joke of the hosts' respective heights, at the time of writing. --Lord Belbury (talk) 10:17, 14 May 2021 (UTC)

Date of birth

What's considered a reliable source for DOB? Aside from all the various sources available on the internet, Alex's own Twitter has it as 10 September. And in an unexpected result from Googling his birth date to find sources, his Director info on Companies House has it as September 1978. Musical lottie (talk) 18:34, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

@Musical lottie: Companies House doesn't meet WP:BLPPRIVACY: it has to be clear the subject wants it to be public. Non-professional sources (including Goodreads) are often mistaken about celebrity birthdays (or just about anything celebrity, particularly "net worth"), and often repeat mistakes that originated on Wikipedia. Word from Horne himself is fine but it has to be really explicit: you'd be shocked by how many "it's my birthday" tweets I've seen that are out by multiple days. We also have to have a stable way to link to it so that a reader in 10 years' time can verify it's not misinformation. Where's the Twitter confirmation you're referring to? — Bilorv (talk) 21:25, 17 March 2024 (UTC)

It's in the information area ('bio') of his Twitter profile, which unfortunately I don't think is directly linkable. And yeah I didn't want to link Companies House, just mentioned it as corroborating that it was September.

How about this as a source? https://longlivealex.typepad.com/longlivealex/2010/10/the-future.html

Paragraph 5 "What follows is a list of 32 things that have been invented in the last 100 years (up until my birthday, 10th September 1978)." Musical lottie (talk) 16:57, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

To me the bio of https://twitter.com/AlexHorne/ currently reads: Will tell you about things I do here: Taskmaster Universe, Horne Section nonsense, occasional other stuff. You can link to it on Wayback Machine but recent copies of that pages aren't loading for me and older ones have a different bio.

Can you point to some way to confirm that Alex Horne (as in, not an impersonator or some other person with the same name) is the owner of that website? For instance, a link from his official Twitter account (the website links to a different one) or his official website? If so this could be usable, I think. — Bilorv (talk) 17:11, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

There's a video from the Long Live Alex project still on YouTube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rhn50fZr30I, he also confirms his birthdate at the 40 second mark in it. Belbury (talk) 17:46, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

There's a Guardian piece by him which mentions the website - the bio at the end of the article confirms it is Alex Horne the comedian and writer, with his official website linked.

https://www.theguardian.com/theobserver/2010/aug/08/alex-horne-longevity-centenarian-oldest-man-world-record Musical lottie (talk) 19:37, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

(Also just so others can see what I was on about, this is a screenshot of the Twitter page - but maybe it shows up differently if you're not logged in. And obviously not being specifically linkable it's not much use anyway https://i.imgur.com/7Y2pGQ0.jpeg ) Musical lottie (talk) 20:21, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Thanks for all the research. I've added the birthdate with the longliveAlex blog as a source, though perhaps the video could be added as well. The Guardian article is good for confirming it's him and tying it to a reliable source, and possibly worth adding in its own right alongside some new paragraph about the Long Live Alex project. — Bilorv (talk) 22:32, 18 March 2024 (UTC)

Little Alex Horne

I have re-added his nickname of Little Alex Horne into the infobox. The template information for the infobox states that the Other Names section can include nicknames and stage names, and I think it is pretty clear that it could fit one or both of those categories.

The name is properly sourced, and I think the article suffers from its exclusion. It is something that was mentioned in a recent interview with Seth Meyers, and was also featured in a quote from Horne himself when receiving his honorary doctorate. (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-coventry-warwickshire-67997226). 81.152.23.125 (talk) 10:18, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

Addendum: I feel this is also necessary to include, as "Little Alex Horne" also links to this article; to have it unmentioned, never mind unexplained, seems remiss. 81.152.23.125 (talk) 10:21, 31 March 2024 (UTC)

The article needs significant expansion with Horne's role in Taskmaster (at the Fringe, UK programme, international programmes, tie-ins) and in that I would expect some critical commentary on his UK on-screen persona, including the nickname "Little Alex Horne". — Bilorv (talk) 16:15, 31 March 2024 (UTC)