Childhood toy puts tour at risk
Children’s author Craig Smith says the first he knew about brewing complaints about his current nationwide tour was on Thursday last week when one person contacted him.
‘‘Then by Friday, a couple more.’’
Over the weekend, online dissent grew and on Monday, news articles about the complaints appeared.
The problem? A song written 16 years ago about Smith’s childhood golliwog. It has prompted calls for a boycott of his national tour until he apologises for the song and removes it from the internet.
The video, which features a ‘‘PC policeman’’, was made 11 years ago and has been on Smith’s website and YouTube.
Lines in the song are jarring to modern ears – including that the word golliwog shows a lack of respect to ‘‘smiley black people’’.
Smith said he could understand concerns about it but had had trouble getting the video removed and had been locked out of his Google account for years. He had asked his web designers to take it off his website on Tuesday.
‘‘After performing two sold-out shows in Christchurch today, I then boarded a plane and flew to Auckland, where I am now.
‘‘I’m performing here over the next few days . . . I arrived at 7.30, it’s 12.30am now, I’ve had five people trying to help me access my YouTube account and we still can’t do it. It’s not a lost password situation, it’s accessing accounts created before 2009 that were not at that stage owned by Google.
‘‘I think the only way around it is to copyright infringe myself as another friend has just suggested. Crazy but it may be the only way to get this down.’’
He said although the video had been around for more than a decade, the complaints were gathering momentum now because of the success of his books.
‘‘Wonky Donkey was the No 1 selling book in the world for a time and people are searching for things about me more, is my guess.’’