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Shapps? Green? Contribsx? Tory chairman can’t shake off his Pinocchio image

GRANT SHAPPS’S credibility looked near total collapse yesterday after the Tory chairman was snared in a second double identity scandal.

A Wikipedia investigation found evidence that Mr Shapps was linked to a user profile that regularly made flattering changes to his entry in the online encyclopaedia.

The minister, who previously denied and then admitted carrying on his iffy online marketing business under the pseudonym Michael Green after entering Parliament, claimed he was the victim of Labour smear tactics.

But thousands of voters gave their verdict on Twitter, suggesting absurd feats that Mr Shapps could lay claim to on his Wikipedia page.

User @PeterSmith wrote that “at school, Stephen Hawking used to copy Grant Shapps’s physics homework,” while @1MisterRon wondered whether “Shapps scored England’s winning goal in 1966.”

So many people posted mocking messages using the #WikiShappsFacts hashtag that the topic was the third-hottest topic on Twitter.

A Wikipedia representative revealed on Tuesday that the Contribsx account, which made the changes to Mr Shapps page, was “either run by” an account linked to the politician or was being run under his “clear direction.”

It comes just a month after an audio tape revealed that Mr Shapps had been double-jobbing under the pseudonym Michael Green after being elected in 2005, which he had previously insisted was not the case.

When pressed to admit to lying, the Tory said he had “over-firmly denied” his second life.

Children’s writer Michael Rosen reacted to the latest revelations by posting a new poem about Mr Shapps on Twitter.

He wrote: “Grant Shapps is several chaps. People in the media think he fiddled Wikipedia. Grant Shapps never lies.

He mistakenly over-firmly denies.”

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