You've probably never heard of "Shamed doctor Joseph Chikelue Obi". But, in a way, you should. He's hilarious. All over the blogosphere this week has been the story of Andy Lewis, AKA Le Canard Noir, AKA The Little Black Duck, AKA Quackometer, the "exponentially" odd Dr Obi and the wussy ISP Netcetera.

In essence, Le Canard Noir (for it is he) wrote a blog entry about Dr Obi which made Dr Obi unhappy. This is suspected to be not least because the Dr has spent a great deal of time and effort trying to ensure that Google searches of his name result in only good things, and the Quackometer has enough googlejuice to appear at the top of the rankings, outplacing all his good 3rd-person puff-piecery. That's right: he's sockpuppeted Google. Allegedly.

Dr Obi is not the sort of man who lets blog entries be negative about Dr Obi. He took action quickly, and hired a professional letter writer to write a very legal sounding letter to Netcetera, who are the ISP for LCN (Le Canard Noir, do keep up).

The letter itself was quite choice, containing phrases such as "we are instructed to hold you fully liable to the tune of £1 Million (One Million Pounds) per day [hooks little finger to mouth]" (although in the interests of full disclosure, I believe that the Dr Evil hand actions are an embellishment).

But why was Dr Obi so exercised about the whole thing, and where's the local interest story nexus?

Essentially, Dr Obi has a somewhat interesting past. He goes to some lengths to convince the world otherwise, and has an exceedingly eccentric view of the universe.

It's far too much to go into in great detail here, but the main thing for me is the local interest story nexus. This time last week, the top search item for Dr Chikuele Obi on Google would have been positive. Today, this story from the Chron in 2004 is, and the Quackometer entry on the man follows swiftly behind. Hooray for the blogosphere - in net-based activity thy reign supreme! (Another example of this is Anonymous' frankly brilliant war on Scientology - see here and also here). In 2003 he was suspended by South Tyneside District Council and had his medical licence suspended by the GMC after a series of bizarre incidents, including:

"that he failed to attend to patients, wrote inappropriate notes about colleagues and gave a dating agency phone number to a psychiatric patient."

Although for me the most local aspect of this is that the Chron did a 'probe' on him at "an upstairs flat in Mersey Place, Carr Hill"!

Since then he has moved to Eire and set himself up as an alt.med. type, awarding himself PhDs from his own college and fellowships of his own organisations. He also threatens legal action against ISPs and search engines whenever anything anti-Obi gets high up the list, such as a blog entry that google.ie de-indexed after a similar letter to the one sent to LCN was sent to them. He keeps approximately 80 websites and around a dozen blogs, all dedicated to himself and his various causes, all using the word 'exponentially' - and not necessarily in its correct context. I don't know why, he just seems very attached to it).

Anyway by way of rounding this entry off, and giving right of reply to Dr Obi, here's the man himself, or at least courtesy of the Chron:

"Dr Obi uses a number of medical and professional titles online and claims membership of a long list of organisations.

These include FRCAM (Dublin), FRIPH (UK) FACAM (USA) and provost of the Royal College of Alternative Medicine (RCAM Dublin).

The Royal College of Alternative Medicine appears to be little more than a website. It is listed as a company at Companies Registration Office in Dublin but the phone number given is not in use. Fellowship of the RCA is available to buy from the site.

Dr Obi, originally from Nigeria, does not say where he did his doctorate in science (DSc) or when he joined the Royal Institute of Public Health (RIPH). No one was able to confirm whether or not Dr Obi was a member of the RIPH when the Chronicle contacted it.

Dr Obi says he is a member of the Institute of Clinical Research (ICR), a training body based in Maidenhead that sells membership online for £50.

He also says he is a member of the International Stress Management Association, which also sells membership online from as little as £30.

Dr Obi also claims to be a member of the World Medical Association (WMA), which sells annual membership via its website for 37 euros."