A couple of years ago I read an article in a newspaper (I'm 85%
certain it was the New York Times) that had to do with a group of
people who created a fictional person in their office. When they got
cold calls or needed a scapegoat, they referred people to this made-up
entity. Eventually they were approached by one of the Who's Who
publications to include this fictional person in the directory.

Thinking that someone was bound to fact check whatever it was they
came up with, they went ahead and created a really wild entry for this
fake person. It got published. I can't recall all the details of the
entry, but the phrase "sur la abatoir" was part of it.

I have done searching of the NY Times both through their own archive
search and through the premium databases to no avail, but it's always
possible I've been missing something obvious. It may not have been the
NY Times though. Whatever the paper was, it would have been published
before 6/2002.

A successful answer will provide the complete citation for the article
(I can locate the full text from there) with a tip if you can give me
a citation to the pertinent entry in whatever Who's Who it was.

Ask for clarification if you need it.

Regards, 
luciaphile-ga

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Clarification of Question by luciaphile-ga on 26 Mar 2004 16:10 PST

Culled two more things from my notes (lesson to me: write legibly in future): 
1. Pretty sure this was Who's Who in America
2. And there was some kind of pun with Song of Roland. To be precise,
I have written down chanson roland

That's all I got. Oh, and the notes I have are dated 4/2001

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Clarification of Question by luciaphile-ga on 26 Mar 2004 17:33 PST

In reference to Pink's comment:

Definitely not the Belgian Who's Who (from my scrawled notes, I really
think it was Who's Who in America), and my memory is that the faked
names and locations were more subtle than the one from the Google
Groups posting. The reference to "sur la abatoir" had to do with
either where the person in the entry supposedly lived or was part of a
fake publication.

The context if it helps: my Reference instructor handed us a photocopy
of the Who's Who entry and asked us to see if anything popped out at
us. Then she had a photocopy of the newspaper article which explained
that it had been a joke/hoax.

Here you go.  I can't give you the whole article due to copyright, but
I've excerpted the juciest bits:

==========

Ghost Writer 
The Venerable `Who's Who' Lists an Author/Editor Who Never Was 
JACK SMITH
The Los Angeles Times Feb 14, 1988.  pg. 6 

...I was slightly disillusioned when I read [Joe Queenan]'s piece
about the inclusion in the 1986-87 edition of Roland Chanson Webster,
a magazine editor, who receives 18 lines, including the dubious
information that he was born in Arcis-sur-L'Abattoir, France, that his
wife is the former Trish Abigail Boogen, that he authored "Causes of
World War II" and "Mr. Sleazy in Zion," that he has worked as a writer
or editor for Your Business, the Business of Business, Latin-American
Business and Our Business magazines and is a member of Christian
Managing Editors, Tarrytown Dog Club, Westchester Dog Club, North
Bronx Dog Club and Christian Dog Club...

...Queenan reveals that when he edited American Business... R. C.
Webster had been a figure on the masthead for some time. "Though he
may have started out as somebody's nom de plume...by the time I got
there, he was turning up as managing editor, staff writer and general
office help-wherever we needed to fill a space on the masthead."


Queenan reveals that when he edited American Business a few years ago,
R. C. Webster had been a figure on the masthead for some time. "Though
he may have started out as somebody's nom de plume," Queenan says, "by
the time I got there, he was turning up as managing editor, staff
writer and general office help-wherever we needed to fill a space on
the masthead."

R. C. Webster was a handy name staffers used to get rid of salesmen,
collectors and flacks...


When Queenan inevitably received a Who's Who application, so did R. C.
Webster. Queenan filled out both forms...


==========

Cute story!

pafalafa-ga


search strategy:  Lexis-Nexis search on [ sur l'abattoir ]

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Clarification of Answer by pafalafa-ga on 27 Mar 2004 07:52 PST

Thanks!

Very kind of you...especially since I TOTALLY forgot about the actual
Who's Who ref.  I was so pleased with myself for finding the newspaper
article, that it made me momentarily stupid (at least, I hope it's
momentarily).

If you run into any obstacles with the actual citation, let me know,
and I'll be pleased to try and run it down for you.

Cheers!

paf

This is it! Thanks so much. I never thought of doing a search on Lexis
for l'abatoir and I should have. Now to find the Who's Who entry, but
you've given me enough to go on.

Michele --

I did an exhaustive search in the NY Times for the 7 years 1995-2002
and nothing.  But the Times' editors sure do like Who's Who
backgrounders whenever an issue surfaces . . .

I also checked the Internet and Infotrac using a variety of search
schemes.  I'm hoping that this will help other researchers who tackle
it:
"Who's Who" + false
"Who's Who" + fake
"Who's Who" + scam

Best regards,

Omnivorous-GA

Any chance that this could be a reference to your story?

"I have a book - The Book of Brilliant Hoaxes... It has a section
about Victor Lewis-Smith who invented some character for his radio
show and ended up with this imaginary person alledgedly getting into
the Belgian(I think) Who's Who. The entry states, among other things,
that one of his children is named Bobo Tampax Turdy."

http://groups.google.com/groups?selm=6km66n%24lgp%241%40svr-c-01.core.theplanet.net&oe=UTF-8&output=gplain

Michele --
 
A check of the 1997-2001 Who's Who in America shows none of the following:
 
Chanson Roland
Chanson Rolland
Rolland Chanson
 
But they do have Susan Stockard Channing listed nearby.
 
Best regards,
 
O.