A weekly editor has labelled an MP’s aide as  “a bit of a plonker” after he admitted removing a reference to his newspaper’s tongue-in-cheek campaign from Wikipedia.

As previously reported on HTFP, the Croydon Advertiser launched its ‘Campaign to End All Campaigns’ in December, after Croydon Central MP Gavin Barwell began five campaigns of his own within little more than a month.

The campaign achieved national recognition and saw Advertiser editor Glenn Ebrey face off against Mr Barwell in a BBC television debate.

Now Mr Barwell’s assistant Mario Creatura, pictured left,  has admitted deleting a reference to the campaign from the MP’s Wikipedia page.

Commenting on Mario’s actions, Glenn said: “We’re used to politicians trying to rewrite history, but it seems not so super Mario has taken that a little too literally in this case.

“Unfortunately, one source he can’t edit is the Croydon Advertiser so now, he just looks a bit of a plonker really.”

When challenged on his actions by the Advertiser, Mario insisted he had “no problem with people criticising” Mr Barwell but said the entry was not “biographical” and was “politically motivated”.

The page referenced a report about the Advertiser’s piece in The Independent, which reads: “The local paper the Croydon Advertiser called on Mr Barwell to ‘stop launching campaigns’ and persistent attempts at headline-grabbing in December 2014, saying ‘Gavin, we get it, there’s an election on’.”

Mario used his computer at the House of Commons to delete that sentence, an action which has since been undone.

He told the Advertiser: “I hold my hands up. It was an error. I took the sentence out. It was a half-a-second thing.

“I didn’t think about the repercussions. I didn’t think about what I was doing other than I didn’t think it was appropriate on a Wikipedia page.

“What I took out was factually accurate not out of political motivation – yeah there was a bit of that in my head – but the main reason I did it was because I thought it was slightly politically biased and I want everything on Wikipedia, no matter whose page it is, to be factually accurate.”

He added Mr Barwell had not been aware of what he had been doing.