I do not expect to be remembered when I’ve left a room and I cannot conceive that you would read something just because it had my name on it. But earlier this week, an ad agency used that name of mine to boost its Google SEO ratings because I am apparently that much of a draw.

Well, okay, this much of a draw: the company stole the names of maybe two dozen writers better known than I am. It put them against articles that were nicked from other websites but given a once-over by AI to make them sound worse. Each of us got a bio and a photograph, again seemingly both generated by AI.

I’m a little twitchy that the bio for me made me sound the single most boring man in the land and so AI can be uncannily accurate sometimes. But the face it gave me. Gormless. Bewildered.

Okay, yes, very funny, stop that. But the man in the photo was also young. You’ve run out of smart remarks now, haven’t you?

So have I, really. I was a bit shaken by it all. I thought about asking the Writers’ Guild for advice, but I said I was only this much of a draw: everyone else was far more significant in their field, and seemingly far louder. I think it might have been a timezone thing, too, as they were yelling legals about this before I even woke up.

But at some point quite quickly, “William Gallagher” was renamed to something generic and the problem, or at least that problem, was gone.

I get why it bothered me so much but I also don’t get why it bothered me so much. I have that whole thing about not being remembered, so I don’t see why an alternative version of me would matter.

I rather like not mattering. I’ve produced an event that’s running this Monday night and I was trying to explain to one of the people fronting it that I enjoy both having made it happen and not being seen to have made it happen. She knows, the rest of the gang knows, the star of the event knows, but I’ll be at the back of the room along with attendees who have no reason to imagine I had anything to do with it.

Someone once described me as wanting to be an invisible writer, that I wanted the work to be centre stage and anything about me just is just a blockage in the way. I relished and cherished that.

So please explain. I believe I am an invisible writer who doesn’t make any impact in a room and quite happily does not matter at events — yet I’m telling you about the event, I’m shaking at being impersonated online, I have an entire bloody YouTube channel with my face on it, and I write to you every week while never once asking how you are.