Journalism Career
Abandoning a childhood dream to join the Canadian Mounties, Rifkind started in journalism as an editorial assistant for the "showbiz" website Peoplenews.com, before becoming a freelance writer for The Times and the Evening Standard, and a columnist for the Glasgow Herald. He joined The Times in 2005, taking over the gossip column ("People") from Andrew Pierce.
As of 2011 Rifkind writes a weekly opinion column for The Times on Fridays and a satirical diary ("My Week") on Saturdays, in the style of a public figure in the news. He also writes a fortnightly column for The Spectator and a monthly column for GQ. Additionally, he has appeared on BBC Radio Scotland and BBC London and BBC Radio 4's satirical quiz show The News Quiz. His debut novel, Overexposure, a satirical farce set in the London media world, was published in 2007.
Rifkind was named Columnist of the Year in the 2011 Editorial Intelligence Comment Awards and was highly commended in the Best of Humour category at the Society of Editors' Press Awards in 2012.
On 8 January 2011, Rifkind's full-page essay on Wikipedia, titled "The website that turned the world wiki", was published. This was based on a conversation with site co-founder Jimmy Wales and included the admission that, in 2010, he (Rifkind) had inserted fictitious information about Queen Victoria in the Wikipedia entry for 29 April (the date in 2011 of the then-planned wedding of Prince William and Catherine Middleton) and had successfully fooled at least two journalists who had used the material in published stories. Rifkind claimed also that, over the years, his own entry had been "humorously vandalised" by colleagues of his wife.
Read more about this topic: Hugo Rifkind
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