Talk:Olivia Colman/Archive 1

Colman's
I've heard that she is related to the Colman's Mustard family (from Norwich). Surely if true this is well worth mentioning? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.141.84.82 (talk) 22:18, 13 July 2010 (UTC)
 * If a reliable source says so. Jim Michael (talk) 18:27, 9 May 2011 (UTC)

Indian descent?
The article is currently categorized in Category:British people of Indian descent. The episode of "Who do you think you are?" that focused on her ancestor Harriet Slessor, a British woman who was born in India during the British occupation of the country, did speculate that Slessor's mother might have been a local Indian woman, but without presenting any form of concrete proof. However, after the episode aired, the Berkshire Record Office published the will of Slessor's mother, which proved that she was one Seraphina Donclere, whose name indicates that she was not Indian after all but probably some European nationality, possibly Dutch, and that she died in 1810. I believe there is insufficient evidence (based on the conjecture in the TV series) to include this category. --Tataral (talk) 09:50, 3 September 2018 (UTC)
 * Quite agree. The info about the will might be usefully added somewhere. Martinevans123 (talk) 09:53, 3 September 2018 (UTC)

Birth Date Controversy
Thought I'd mention that Colman claims she had to contact Wikipedia to get her birth date on this article changed, but after reviewing the several hundred revisions since her birthdate was first added by Jbattersby on April 15, 2006, I have concluded that her birth date has always been correct and appropriately cited. At no time was it ever changed or even vandalized. Just an FYI. The Pony Toast (talk) 03:56, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

---Dear Pony toast: note the age is there **twice** on each page, and the one under the photo has indeed been vandalised. For example here from the 14 January 2019, says she is 83. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 91.160.144.164 (talk) 13:42, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

--- Dear anonymous IP: I too had a brief look for the alleged incident in both sections and found no revisions showing 1966. The one you cited was only live for a minute. We are looking for a date that remained for a month or two. Its quite possible there was a bit of trolling at some point and it would be nice to find the revision Olivia Coleman actually saw. I believe her, and I am sure if do a methodical search, I would find it. The amusing part is that she wrote to Wikipedia to get it changed. Its understandable an actress may not understand how Wikipedia works, but then it gets reported in the national press as though Wikipedia content is carefully controlled by some evil "global" corporation. Periglio (talk) 14:08, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Ooh, an evil "global" corporation, that sounds very naughty. We all know it's not really global. Martinevans123 (talk) 14:12, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
 * , After the above note from the anonymous IP, I have once again gone through each and every revision. Besides the one vandalism noted above, neither birth date was changed, and certainly not for more than a month of time (which i would have seen on my first or second pass-through performed last night). The Pony Toast (talk) 15:31, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
 * et al - the 'depressing part' - not the amusing part - is that because Wikipedia has such a stunningly self-regarding and self-referential edit community, and such a stunningly opaque and pseudo-participatory decision model, a lot of well-meaning editors - I am one among I am sure many others - who have put useful, bordering on significant time into edits, have totally given up on contributing. Makes perfect sense, is not amusing, is just ... depressing ... that Colman would have no idea who to contact or how. Wikipedia never makes this obvious. The fact I have to use this fucking ancient edit syntax to even say this is just more proof. I think Wikipedia is a grand human contribution, and while it's not a giant corp, it's as bad or far worse in terms of opaque administration and leadership. My wish is that the edit community could be more self-aware and more aware of the giant flaws in the model, rather than pretending everyone is just too stupid or too unethical to play the edit game correctly. jmanooch 16:50, 29 January 2019 (UTC)

As of present the Dailymail, The Mirror, and The Independent have also picked up this story. The Pony Toast (talk) 15:56, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Almost as if the Daily Mail had a grudge there, for some reason. "... the site demanded to see a copy of her birth certificate before changing the error"? That doesn't sound quite right. Perhaps if we review the history of this Talk page we can discover not only when the request was made, and the name of the school friend who Colman pretended to be, but also who made that "demand" to see a copy of her birth certificate? But no, no sign of anything. One wonders who exactly she "emailed". Martinevans123 (talk) 16:20, 28 January 2019 (UTC)


 * A birth certificate would be WP:BLPPRIMARY anyway. If she emailed the site in line with WP:AUTOPROB, it's possible that someone requested to see it, but we need some diffs from the article history here. From a manual search and WikiBlame I can only find 30 January 1974 and no appearance of 1966 in the dim and distant past history. It's a puzzle, folks.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 17:49, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
 * , thank you for introducing me to this wonderful tool. The Pony Toast 🍞 (Talk) 18:11, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

The challenge issued to those media outlets is to do some form of substantiation. I'm not finding anything remotely close to what has been alleged and our revisions are here for the world to see. Birth date vandalism has been of late and the screenshot from the Independent comes from this edit on January 28 from Aberdeen and was never in the history of this article until these rags wrote about it. Are they trashy UK tabloids? Counterparts to the National Enquirer in the US, right? It seems to be their fault for printing tripe. None of them did their due diligence or they would have known that this situation is false. It remains upon them now to research and find where these birth dates were supposedly wrong in the revisions of this article or otherwise print retractions. It doesn't appear to have ever happened. Please search the history and see for yourself. — Berean Hunter   (talk)  19:27, 28 January 2019 (UTC) — Berean Hunter   (talk)  20:50, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
 * , given the amount of news this is generating...would it be improper to add a section on this controversy or would the be giving it undue weight? The Pony Toast 🍞 (Talk) 19:30, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Well, Bearean, yes trashy tabloid Mirror, the less trashy but unreliable (and Wiki banned) Daily Fail, but the very respectable (and reliable) Indy. But less face it, if Colman did say those things (although I haven't actually listened to the David Tennant podcast to check, they are just reporting what she said? You know, these luvvies do tend to exaggerate, don't they. Martinevans123 (talk) 19:50, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
 * They failed to fact check when the resources are available to them and that is their job. Had they done so, they may have written balanced pieces rather than the one-sided slants. They didn't make any effort and that misleading screenshot saying that it is "back" to being incorrect leads their readers towards the wrong conclusion. They helped perpetuate the falsehoods and it is egg on their face for having done so. They have a responsibility now to check the veracity of the statements. Please note that they didn't bother to pose the question here on the talk page before publishing. They did nothing to fact check...very shoddy journalism., NOTNEWS applies here.
 * Yes, I think you are right. Who was it who actually first broke the "story"? It seems unattributed. I'm guessing it was triggered by a press release, speculatively sent out to all and sundry, by the makers of Tennant's pod cast. Something funny, yet relevant, mildly shocking, but not worth checking. And without any legal consequences. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:03, 28 January 2019 (UTC)

It's also been picked up by the french edition of Slate (magazine):. Regards, Comte0 (talk) 21:16, 28 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Prior to the publication of the news stories, it looks like the birth date was vandalised for about two minutes on 14 January 2019.. Since this involved changing the date of birth from an IP address, it was flagged as "Mobile edit, Mobile web edit, possible BLP issue or vandalism". It's now pretty much certain that there were no edits saying 1966, or any other date for any length of time. The journalists have gone along with this podcast.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 07:00, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Have we checked all the language editions? Although I now suspect its some other online website and Wikipedia has been used as a generic term for an information website. Periglio (talk) 00:14, 30 January 2019 (UTC)
 * Maybe it was IMDb or some other website. This happened with Joan Collins in 2011, see the talk page archive there. She tweeted that her Wikipedia entry claimed that she had slept with Arthur Lowe but it was actually an obscure website called NNDB (which as of 2019 is still claiming that she slept with Arthur Lowe), obviously very little supervision over there.-- ♦Ian Ma c  M♦  (talk to me) 06:24, 30 January 2019 (UTC)


 * So this story is now published in English too, in the same media outlet : The Conversation. You can check it at their site and it's highly indebted to the fact checking work that has been made here. Alexandre Hocquet (talk) 22:33, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
 * That's a very fair and well-written article. Thanks for the link. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:39, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
 * Thanks for the encouraging comments, it means a lot to me as this is my first piece in English about Wikipedia, even though I made a few in French. Constructive criticism (or praise) from anyone welcome Alexandre Hocquet (talk) 22:51, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
 * It really is excellent. Factual, clear and easy to read. Congratulations. Martinevans123 (talk) 22:54, 14 February 2019 (UTC)
 * I'm pretty sure I saw something about the birth date on this Talk page. Someone objected several times to the date and then revealed themselves as Olivia Colman, followed by the exchange about the birth certificate. I looked it up here when she mentioned it in a podcast or possibly in print somewhere. I also think I saw this relatively recently (2018???) but can't tie it down more than that. Or I could just be having an hallucination but I'm convinced I read it here!    — Preceding unsigned comment added by 213.48.15.246 (talk) 16:49, 25 February 2019 (UTC)
 * The entire talk page history of this article is thin prior to 2019. Nobody has queried her age, although her birth name was queried in 2010.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 16:56, 25 February 2019 (UTC)

Original audio recording
Since this is on iTunes and is 57 minutes long, here is a clip (at around the 11 minute mark) with what Olivia Colman says in the podcast (click to play). The newspapers have accurately reported what she said, but it is a long way from anything that can be found in the article history. This news story is also in the Evening Standard, Sky News and Harper's Bazaar. As the Italians would say about all of this, se non è vero, è ben trovato.-- ♦Ian Ma c M♦  (talk to me) 09:40, 29 January 2019 (UTC)
 * I just came across this story which reminds me of the Philip Roth and Anatole Broyard saga, and I see it as a very good topic for a paper on "Wikipedians cross-check the pieces of information that journalists don't" that I'd like to write, based on the investigations that people made on the history page, unless someone here opposes it. Alexandre Hocquet (talk) 22:38, 3 February 2019 (UTC)
 * So it's done. It has just been published in The Conversation in French (and hopefully in English soon, which would make more sense). I want to thank everyone that contributed to this investigation in this talk page. My paper has been designed as a tribute to them. kutgw. Alexandre Hocquet (talk) 02:58, 7 February 2019 (UTC)

Birth name
Anyone know of an online source for Olivia's original (birth) name or why she chose to change it? My sister went to school with her, and it seems the sort of thing that ought to be on a entry about her, but can't add it as primary research (and in case Olivia is her real name, but she used a different one while at school). DiverScout (talk) 11:01, 7 March 2010 (UTC)
 * The London Gazette gives her name as: "Sarah Caroline SINCLAIR". The Guardian says: "Her first name is Sarah [Caroline Olivia Colman]." Which is correct? Martinevans123 (talk) 12:15, 16 December 2021 (UTC)
 * FreeBMD has only one birth record for a Sinclair born in Norwich in 1974, and that's Rachael Louise, registered in the 3rd quarter. Martinevans123 (talk) 13:34, 18 December 2021 (UTC)
 * She was born Sarah Caroline Colman, see here. There's no "Olivia" on her birth record. In the source already cited here, she says she took "Olivia" from a friend, not from a middle name. All Hallow&#39;s Wraith (talk) 02:12, 2 January 2022 (UTC)
 * That familysearch.org source requires a subscription? I can't see it. But that fully concurs with the FreeBMD record . Martinevans123 (talk) 10:47, 2 January 2022 (UTC)

British Airways Flight Safety video
Here's Olivia's bid for a "SISTA" award: (from about 4:00). Any secondary sources? Martinevans123 (talk) 13:26, 14 March 2019 (UTC)