This bright little chap is Reddy Kilowatt who appeared on the bills sent out by the East African Power and Lighting Company when I worked for them many moons ago.

Why is he appearing here? Well that's a mildly tortuous tale that I will do my best to keep brief.

I was looking into a company that had offered to pay the Grads for the privilege of placing adverts on their site when I came across a posting in an on-line discussion about the company by a certain Red E. Kilowatt. Now I know that Americans often have funny names but I wasn't fooled for a minute. This is clearly a pseudonym.

So I diverted my enquiries and discovered that Reddy is in fact an American invention, or at least has a long and glorious history in the American electricity industry. Indeed he has a website devoted to him where fans ensure his memory does not die.

There is no mention on that site of his African safari, nor of his venture into the east, since I am sure that China Power and Light in Hongkong also used him. In due course I may get around to rectifying those omissions but we are talking long term here.

Now Red's post also introduced me to a use of the term sockpuppet that was new to me although according to Wikipedia it's been around since 1993. I suppose I should say that I've always called a sock puppet a glove puppet even if it was made with a sock so the word was more or less new to me even in its original meaning but that's somewhat by the by and is probably a manifestation of the US-British linguistic divide.

The OED recognises a figurative use of the term as a person whose actions are controlled by another; a minion, citing a reference in 2000 and Merriam-Webster steps into cyberspace with their definition: a false online identity used for deceptive purposes.

But for the full-blown up to date horror of the term as applied to the actions of the company whose bona fides I was looking into we must turn to Wikipedia:

In current usage, the perception of the term has been extended beyond second identities of people who already post in a forum to include other uses of misleading online identities. For example, a NY Times article claims that "sock-puppeting" is defined as "the act of creating a fake online identity to praise, defend or create the illusion of support for one’s self, allies or company."

The key difference between a sockpuppet and a regular pseudonym ...(like Red's)..... is the pretense that the puppet is a third party who is not affiliated with the puppeteer.

This is not the objective of the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre. They are not out to deceive, they just want to make you laugh. I'm sure they could extend their appeal to China, Africa and the US of A by adding a Reddy Kilowatt glove, sorry sock puppet to their cast.