Great Email Disasters

by Chas Newkey-Burden

Meet the sheepish stars of the World Wide Web whose stories will make your toes curl. There is the story of the man who emailed a woman he met at a party, telling her, "This is the part where I throw caution to the wind . . . Your smile is the freshest of my special memories," and then sat back in horror as his email was circulated round the world; or the government spin doctor who emailed colleagues on September 11, 2001 advising them that it was "a good day to bury bad news" after the World Trade Center had been attacked, but before the Twin Towers themselves collapsed; the ex-employee who thought he'd gotten revenge by wrecking his former company's computer system with a bombardment of emails, but was discovered and ended up in court; the Pentagon officer who accidentally included a schoolgirl on an email list that discussed top-secret matters; and the marketing man who wrote an email mocking his employer and sent the message straight to his boss.

224 pages, Paperback

First published September 28, 2007

About the author

Chas Newkey-Burden is a British journalist and author. His books include The Reduced History of Britain, Great Email Disasters and Not In My Name: A Compendium Of Modern Hypocrisy (co-written with Julie Burchill). He has also written unauthorised biographies of Simon Cowell, Paris Hilton, Amy Winehouse, Alexandra Burke and six official publications for Arsenal football club.

He has written for publications including The Guardian, Four Four Two, Total Football, Time Out, Attitude and The Big Issue; and internet sites including Ynetnews, The First Post and Guardian Blogs. A former Contributing Editor to Loaded magazine and former editor of the football website icons.com, where he was also Dennis Bergkamp's official biographer. Interviewees include David Beckham, Ricky Gervais, Frank Lampard, Rachel Stevens and James Bourne.

Newkey-Burden has discussed his books, football news and the Middle East on TV and radio shows including Sky News, CNN, BBC Breakfast News, The Today Programme on Radio 4, Five Live Breakfast, TalkSport, Capital Gold and BBC Radio London. He was featured on the BBC 2 documentary Cold War Kids, the Sky One show Celebrities On Heat and The Biography Channel and Fuse Television's documentaries on Amy Winehouse.

Newkey-Burden has a blog, entitled OyVaGoy, in which he describes himself as 'philosemitic' and posts opinions firmly in support of the state of Israel, and critical of those he perceives as being against Israel.
In July 2008, the British satirical magazine Private Eye reported that Newkey-Burden had posted positive reviews of his own books on the Amazon.co.uk online bookstore.