Old News From The www.join-me.co.uk Archives (part 1)

==The Oldest of Old News==
Hey - here's what one person - Joinee Whitby - got up to in a typical week of Word Spreading...
* He contacted fellow joinees and set up a 10-strong MSN Messenger thing so that Joinees could swap ideas and solve problems as a team.
* He created an unofficial Join Me t-shirt with the slogan "I've Joined. Have you?", and then wore it at every opportunity.
* He stuck a Post-It note in his staff room with a link to this site on it.
* He wrote a poem by way of a tribute to The Cause.
* He created his own unofficial Join Me website, at [www.joinee.co.uk]
* He e-mailed a local newspaper in an attempt to get Join Me in the papers, while leaving a mysterious envelope at the offices of another. It had nothing but the URL to [www.join-me.co.uk this site] in it. He also attempted to bully a researcher for a local radio station into mentioning it in some form.
* He printed fifty business cards with the, er, unofficial website URL on it.
* He created an unofficial Join Me anthem, in the hope of wooing potential Joinees to The Cause through the medium of music.
Well done, Joinee Whitby!
Well done to Joinee Jess! She's created (a) badge in honour of The Cause. Why not make your own?
Three Joinees met at a London pub last week to compare notes and develop strategies... Joinees Jess, Gail and Whitby met at the Yorkshire Grey, and were also joined by an unnamed potential joinee who'd turned up out of curiousity after stumbling across this site while looking for car insurance. You will be glad to hear that he later Joined Me. Here are the other three looking extremely happy to be part of The Collective.
Thanks to Joinee Jon for doing a great job of spreading the word throughout Amsterdam...
And the word continues to spread... Joinee Tatem has been infiltrating other peoples' websites... Joinee Ria has been putting up posters in her sixth form common room... Joinee Whitby has managed to whet the appetite of his local radio station... Joinee Chapman has set up another MSN Messenger Group... oh, and Joinees Whitby and Doig have been busy creating new and imaginative badge designs to help the cause... why not make your own?
All hail Joinees Christopher & Wayne, a top wedding band, who have put together the official Join Me song. This is a very important part of the movement, and you will all be aware of it very soon.
(please note - this song is now available online for you to download!!)
Well done to Joinee Lulham -- he's created his own Join Me screensaver, with which to subtly sway colleagues and loved ones into Joining...
Well done to Joinee Woollven, who has created his own Join Me t-shirt, and wears it whenever he can. 
Well done to Joinee Della, of Manchester, who recently managed to slur her way through a wedding speech and turn the topic of conversation around to why people should join each other... before giving out the URL of this site to the assembled mass of wedding guests. From small acorns...
(An) old man has found a novel use for official Join Me stickers. He has one plastered over his bald patch every evening before hitting the town. "I find it helps me relax", he told me. Do you have any other novel uses for Join Me stickers?
Well done to Joinee Iain Blair. Joinee Blair has designed his own Join Me car stickers, which you can buy from the official Iain Blair website (www.iainblair.com) for £2.
Well done to Joinee Whitby, who wore his homemade Join Me t-shirt at a fun run recently. 15,000 people were in the race, although, as Joinee Whitby himself points out, most of them were in front of him.
(www.join-me.co.uk) recently featured in The Daily Mirror, in a very nice piece written by Amy Vickers. Several people joined up as a result. You are all
very welcome. Although I am yet to receive Ms. Vickers' application.
The Official Join Me Song, composed by joinees Wayne and Christopher, is now available on-line. Play it at people and watch as they realise the benefits of Joining Me.
(yes, this has already been mentioned above. Just in slightly different words.)
Well done to Joinee Jess. Her sign, saying Join Me, was placed in her local Asda. 
World domination is now more or less assured.
==Old News - Raymond Price, trips abroad and the first Silver Joinees==
(If you're familiar with the book, many of these news items may appear to be in the wrong order. Allowing for artistic licensing, they might not be, but it will drive you mad trying to work out if it is, if you let it...)
(Joinee Fletcher) recently helped me achieve something Very Good in the name of Join Me. I will reveal more soon, but we should all benefit from it.
A group of joinees who met in London recently were on the receiving end of instructions and a package from me... I asked them, in the name of the collective, to undertake one of our first Commandments: Make An Old Man Happy. This they did for most of an afternoon, making no less than four old men very happy indeed. But then they hit the motherload, meeting this man (pictured). His name is Raymond Price. He couldn't get home from London to Teignmouth in Devon, because his car had broken down. He was distressed. In his own words, he was "in the doldrums". But fear not! The joinees were there to help, and clubbed together to buy him a train ticket home. "I have never been so happy in my life as I am now," said Mr Price.
(Joinee Gavin is) a man I met in the street in a foreign country very recently. He agreed to Join Me after reading all about the collective on one of our leaflets... and the best thing about him? His job. He is a joiner.
(A) group of lads from Newcastle are preparing to storm their way through Tyneside in (their) special t-shirts, for an evening of leafletting, stickering, and recruiting. Well done to each and every one of them, all noble knights of the Join Me collective.
Well done to the following Joinees... they have proved themselves extremely worthy joinees, either in extra efforts made in the name of the cause, or in recruiting new members... I present the first Silver Joinees (who may now refer to themselves as such in the forum).
* Joinee Whitby
* Joinee Haman
* Joinee Koerner
* Joinee Tomlin
* Joinee James
* Joinee Jess
* Joinee Wilkin
* Joinee Nicholson
* Joinee Craib
* Joinee Davison
Well done all. Remember, though: all joinees are equal. Some are just more silvery than others. 
I owe (Joinee Singh) a debt of gratitude, after he decided to Join Me and help me out in a way that will become clear in the fullness of time.
And still the stickers spread. Two bellydancers from Leeds appear to have decided to include them in their act. More male joinees are virtually guaranteed, thanks to this selfless act alone.
Welcome to new joinees such as Joinee Gerstein and Joinee Bennett. They responded to a 4am call to TalkSport radio, along with other kindhearted joinees like them. Do make them feel at home.
The Leader is currently out of the country. He recently made his first international television appearance, on a foreign, national chat show. It went well.
Well done to Joinee Lowe. She recently placed Join Me stickers all over Newcastle. One of them was spotted by the Newcastle Collective ( see above) during their efforts to Spread The Word... they were surprised and delighted to see that another joinee was doing their bit in the North East. Joinee Lowe is now a fully-fledged member of The Newcastle Collective, as opposed to a rogue, lone vigilante-style joinee. There are now eight members of the Newcastle Collective, making it the biggest localised collective yet.
The stickers are still spreading... the lead singer of up 'n' coming band The Pattern (wore) his at a recent press call... thanks to Joinee Jess for the pic...
Well done to the Newcastle Collective... in an impressive effort to Spread The Word, they stayed up all night to paint a huge Join Me banner, which they then hung off the world famous Tyne Bridge, in Newcastle...
Police and bystanders were unanimously baffled, and the Newcastle media intrigued... calls from The Sunday Sun, The Newcastle Evening Chronicle and BBC Radio Newcastle were all made to Join Me HQ, with reporters eager to help Spread The Word... the talk show host Alan Robson was less impressed, however, when Joinee Koerner tried to impress upon him, live on air, the importance of Joining Up.
New localised branches of Join Me have started to spring up all over the country... collectives in Newcastle, Manchester, Bath, and York are preparing to meet up to compare notes, develop strategies, and lark about. Joinees in Oxford, such as Joinee Alia, are meeting this week to discuss what they should next do in the name of Join Me. Any other collectives out there? Why not meet up and compare notes? However, please, please be careful. Join Me is a wonderful world, but the world outside it is sometimes not so wonderful. If you plan to meet up with fellow joinees, make sure it's in groups of three or more, and always, always tell someone where you'll be, what you're doing, and when you'll be back. Okay? Good. Well done.
You will be pleased to hear that The Manchester Collective had a fruitful meeting over the weekend. Says Joinee Claire: "Stickers and leaflets were given out, good deeds done, and fountains run through". It was also a good weekend for other members of the Collective - joinees from all over the country met up in Hyde Park on Sunday. 
Very well done to Silver Joinee Jess for her latest effort to recruit new members to The Cause... Spice Girl Geri Halliwell (has been) asked to Join Me - and... by the look on her face it won't be long before she does.
Well done indeed to Joinee (and Reverend) Gareth Saunders who is the latest Silver Joinee in the Collective... Why? Because he's made Join Me into front page news!
Readers of the Inverness Courier were greeted with (a) picture of the man himself, wearing his official Join Me t-shirt... The story ran as follows...
SIGNING UP TO 'KINDNESS' COLLECTIVE
Rev Gareth Saunders sports his 'Join Me' t-shirt serving at Inverness Cathedral has been recruited into a new flock.
Rev Gareth Saunders, a curate at the Cathedral, is now a man with a double mission, spreading the word not only about the Church, but about "Join Me" an informal group which started almost as a joke but is now bringing people together from across the world.
Join Me was created when advertisements appeared in London newspapers asking people to 'join me" by writing back with a passport-sized photograph.
The person whom respondents found they were joining is Danny, who prefers not to give his surname - although he does reveal he used to work for catalogue sales firm Argos."I didn't expect anyone to write back," he says. "Then a few days later people started writing in. It spread and now I have got hundreds of followers, as it were, throughout Europe."
Danny describes Join Me as a collective, not a cult, and told the Courier: "One of the dilemmas I had was whether to use my powers for good or evil, and you will be glad to know I decided on good."
He is encouraging his joinees to carry out "random acts of kindness", but insists Join Me is not a religious organisation. "I'm not religious in any way, but funnily enough I've had two vicars join me," he said.
One of Join Me's two vicar followers, Gareth (30) says: "It seemed like a good idea and could lead somewhere positive, so I said 'Yes', although I didn't know much about it then.
"Being a priest in the Church, there's a certain aspect of me that's into putting faith into things I'm not initially sure about."
Heavy-metal fan Gareth, who has been at the cathedral for three years, has been undertaking missionary work on Danny's behalf, not only wearing his Join Me t-shirt, but distributing leaflets about the group.
"Flyers have been going like hot cakes," Gareth commented. "The cathedral is quite a good place because we get so many people.
"Join Me seems a good idea. Something to get people together to do some good work is what the church is supposed to be about."
(Copyright Inverness Courier, 2002)
Well done to Joinee Owen and friends, who took to the streets of Durham in fancy dress recently in order to Spread The Word of Join Me... at least one person got in touch with Join Me HQ as a result...
Well done to The Bath Collective, who met up for the first time recently to discuss strategies and swap notes. A collective in York is currently forming, in addition to those in Manchester and Oxford.
Well done to Joinee Sutton, for initiating a message-in-a-bottle campaign, in order to Spread The Word. For too long those who use this nation's canals and waterways have escaped our message... now, thanks to Joinee Sutton, those using canalboats and barges in the Surrey area will have trouble escaping us. Twenty biodegradable bottles carrying Join Me leaflets were released over the weekend...
Well done to Joinees Tanya and Christina of Oslo... they're currently Spreading The Word throughout Norway's capital, using their Join Me stickers and a few flirty smiles. Why not do the same?
==Old News - The Karma Army marches on==
(Again, events don't quite match the order they appear in the book)
Well done to my Karma Army... since the scheme launched, joinees all over the world have been performing Unexpected Acts of Niceness and Random Acts of Kindness each and every Good Friday... please continue, and continue to tell me about your Extreme Benevolence... it will all be worth it in the end.
Well done to Joinee Oli G, who was thrown out of a games convention recently for parading about the place with (a) gigantic Join Me banner, crafted by his own fair hand. "It was worth it," he tells me. It certainly was, Joinee Oli. Well done!
Well done to the Belgian Collective, several of whom met up recently at the official Join Me bar in Brussels... here they are enjoying themselves and discussing their first plan of action... The Belgian Collective was formed after a TV appeal by The Leader on Belgium's biggest chat show, and many more Belgians have joined since this photo was taken. Well done, Belgians!
Hey! Joinee! Are you free on SUNDAY DECEMBER 15th 2002?
Join Me HQ has decided it's about time we had the first ever official Join Me meetup, right here in the nation's capital. That's London. Already many joinees have responded to an initial e-mail, with yes's from as far afield as Belgium and Aberdeen.
 I, The Leader, have been doing a fair bit of travelling of late, meeting quite a few joinees. Thanks to all those who’ve agreed to meet with me so far.
Thanks to all those joinees who signed a lovely birthday card for myself, The Leader, and special thanks to Silver Joinee Jess, who organised the whole thing after finding out what it was. You’re the best joinees ever.
Join Me Ambassadorships... I currently have Join Me ambassadors travelling around South Africa, Russia, India and the USA, spreading the word and doing good deeds... could you be a Join Me ambassador? Get in touch!
The Raymond Price Fund For Keeping Raymond Price Out Of Trouble has now been set up... thanks to all those joinees who have promised yearly donations of 20p or so, in order to keep this old man on the straight and narrow, and out of jail! More details here.
Well done to The Karma Army... many hundreds of good deeds have been happening all around the world, every week... keep it going! So far I estimate we have done nearly 5,000 good deeds! 5,000 good deeds that would never have happened if it weren’t for you! Keep going! And keep letting me know what you’re up to!
(A) documentary film crew have been following several joinees around London as they wander about, doing random good deeds in the name of Join Me. Well done them. Apparently, the finished film will be shown at some kind of film festival in December. Should be good.
Word has spread to Paris... I was there a couple of months back, but Joinee Baxter took this one while doing his best to get Parisians interested in signing up. Two did. Well done, Joinee Baxter!
Meet Joinee Christof, a joinee I recruited while in Zurich this week... he promises to do his best to undertake his random acts of kindness each and every Good Friday... Well done, Joinee Christof!
The word has spread to Africa!
Well done to Joinee Cooper, who did a stirling job of recruiting new joinees to the cause, throughout the length and breadth of Cape Town. 	
And it certainly seemed to spread across Africa. (A) picture (of a stickered road-sign) was taken by Joinee Graham, whose holiday to Africa seems to have coincided with another joinee's! "I had to stop the car and take a picture of this!" he said. "I ran out of stickers ages ago, but it was nice to know that other joinees are still doing their best!"
And not just Namibia. Joinee Saunders of Inverness forwarded me the following e-mail, from his friend, Andrew:
Dear Gareth
I forgot to tell you one bizarre thing. I've just come back from two weeks in Ethiopia. While I was over there, I used a tiny internet cafe with about eight computers based at the top of a very run-down office block in Addis Ababa. While I was waiting for something to download, I had a quick look in the browser's history bar. And there, about three links down, was [www.join-me.co.uk].
You can tell your anonymous friend that his scheme has spread to East Africa!
Andrew
==Old News - Karmageddon, and the run up to it==
KARMAGEDDON 2002!
The official Karma Army/Join Me Joinee Meet-up is this Sunday, 15th December, from 2pm in London! Joinees are asked to meet me at the bottom of Oxford Street in London, next to Tottenham Court Road tube station, at 2pm. You will recognise me by my large Join Me sign.
We will then move to The Horse And Groom pub, on Great Portland Street, for 2.30 or so.
If you can only make it later in the afternoon, then that's cool, but do try and come along right at the start. Ace.
I look forward to seeing you then!
Brand new Karma Army leaflets encouraging members of the public to a) Join Me, and b) undertake random acts of kindness for themselves, have just been printed. Joinees attending the meet-up on Sunday will be given these, and they will also be made available to other joinees as and when... well done to Joinee Glanville for donating his graphic design skills free of charge... he has been Silvered, as a result...
Well done to Joinee Sansom of the Bath Collective, whose recent factfinding mission to India went well. Joinee Sansom did various random acts of kindness while he was out
there, including giving the porter at his hotel a cricket bat. For no reason whatsoever. The porter was said to be 'delighted'. Well done, Joinee Sansom!
Well done to Joinees Liv and Morten of Norway, who did a fine job of leafletting in Moscow. One Russian joined as a result of just forty minutes' flyering!
Well done Joinees!
Many joinees have been asking me where they can buy their own Joinee Gaz mug or Joinee Jonesy t-shirt. Well, I'm afraid you won't find them in the shops until a proper deal is done, but in the meantime I can provide instructions as to how to make them. The t-shirt should cost around £15 to make, the mug around £12. For details, e-mail me.
Well done to Joinee Woollven and Joinee Douglas, who plastered a monument in their home town of Northampton with Join Me posters and tried to get people to join up... they also wrapped up some presents and handed them to complete strangers, creating some excellent Random Acts of Kindness as they did so. Well done Joinees Woollven and Douglas!
Well done to Joinee Els, who decided to launch a poster campaign in Belgium this month...
Posters saying "For Everyone A Happy Christmas? No. Not everyone's gonna have a happy Christmas.
There are a lot of people who are poor or lonely, also in your neighbourhood. Invite a lonely or poor man with Christmas. Do it! The Karma Army"''
Posters were plastered all over Antwerp, Ghent and Brussels. Well done, Joinee Els!
And it wasn't long before they were spotted! One poster was spotted in Antwerp by Joinee Reeves, who took a picture of it and sent it to me...
Well, the first-ever "JOIN MEet" happened just before Christmas... a special page is now up, with photos from the event... well done to all those who either met me at the bottom of Oxford Street and took part in a magnificent wave of good karma... or those who turned up at the pub later on and had to hear me sing... or those who made it right until the end, at some dodgy curryhouse on one of Soho's seedier streets...
At the height of the meet-up, there were around fifty of us, including about seven brand new joinees. Well done, all!
Well done to the Dutch illustrator whose Join Me-related artwork has now featured in one of Holland's biggest newspapers. Several Dutch people have joined as a result of seeing it.
Well done to Joinee Joan of Brussels... she recently showed Joinee Willis of Leeds and his girlfriend around the Belgian capital, all in the name of Join Me and the Karma Army. She has also designed a Guide For The Joinee In Brussels, which she will send to any joinees who need to know what to do and where to go in Brussels. Joan also arranged a meet-up in Brussels recently. She has been Silvered, as a result.
Well done, Silver Joinee Joan.
Well done to Joinee Wilkins, who works as a videogames designer, and has done his best to help secure us some more teenage joinees by inserting dozens of 'Join Me' signs into the upcoming PlayStation 2 release, Destruction Derby Online. Anyone playing the Las Vegas level will also be... er... 'treated'... to a picture of your Leader smiling like a loon and begging you to join. Joinee Wilkins has been Silvered as a result. 
Well done, Silver Joinee Wilkins.
==Old News - From Dining Street to Speaker's Corner==
Well, it seems that one of you joinees has been mixing in some pretty impressive circles. Someone, somewhere has told Prime Minister of Great Britain and Northern Ireland Tony Blair about Join Me... and he's been in touch to say he approves of our work.
I've no idea how he heard about us, or why he took it upon himself to ask someone to write a letter, but it's very lovely all the same. 
He didn't join, though.
Er... I'm not quite sure what's going on!
After the huge excitement of getting a letter from Prime Minister Tony Blair last week, imagine my surprise when I received another letter completely out-of-the-blue... this one from Prince Charles! It seems that those in a position of power in this country are lining up to lend their support to the fine work you joinees are doing...
The only explanation I can muster for this latest letter is that at some recent posh event or other, Tony must have taken Charles to one side and told him all about us.
Well done, Tony Blair!
And well done, Joinees!
Gold Joinee Whitby has had a very fruitful trip to New York...
As well as spreading the word through leafletting, Joinee Whitby got up very early one morning and crafted his own Join Me sign, which he then held aloft for an entire morning in the background of the live TV show, Good Morning America, broadcast to the entire nation.
He then spent quite some time convincing the anchorman, Charles Gibson, that the Karma Army is a very good thing indeed.
Plus, a piece of Karma Army-related art he created on a whim so impressed his hotel owner, that it now takes pride of place inside the art gallery of The Gershwin Hotel, New York. Well done, Gold Joinee Whitby!
I have just returned from a second trip to Norway, to meet some of the people who signed up after last year's appearance on Norwegian news and in their newspapers... here are a few of them, proudly wearing Join Me stickers and spreading the word through looking quite cheerful.
Well done, Norwegian Joinees!
The first Join Me signs hidden in the upcoming PlayStation 2 game Destruction Derby 4 have been spotted... If you look closely at this screengrab taken from the current issue of PSW magazine, you might be able to spot a tiny picture of your Leader... I expect an influx of teenage joinees any day.
Congratulations to Joinee Xave of Melbourne, Australia.
Joinee Xave writes: "Here I am wearing a 'Greetings From Tropical Melbourne' t-shirt, here in tropical Melbourne. I have been using it to greet friends and neighbours, and also strangers and tourists when they arrive here in tropical Melbourne at the airport or bus stop. And then I tell them all about Join Me and they look at me."
Excellent work, Joinee Xave!
'Well done to Joinee Riley and her pals, of London... Joinee Riley recently surprised me by having many hundreds of Join Me badges printed at her local badge shop. I will work out some way of making them available to joinees who wish to spread the word through lapels.
Work has begun on the official Join Me Concept Album. The official Join Me band, Joinees Wayne and Christopher, met up with me last week in order to thrash a few ideas around. Wayne brought his guitar to the pub, and Christopher had a small xylophone with him, and pretty soon we'd worked out the words and music to such future classics as Song of the Happy Old Man, The Raymond Price Blues and The Ballad of Danny and Hanne. The album should be available on this site by the end of June.
Huge congratulations go to Joinee Saunders of Inverness... I've made him the second-ever Gold Joinee in recognition of his outstanding random acts of kindness and constant willingness to do good... here he is accepting the honour at a special ceremony in Scotland...
Well, it's still all go here at Join Me HQ.
The official Join Me book is being printed as you read this, with plenty of joinee action included in it. It's out in the UK in early July (delayed by a few weeks thanks to an extra special promotion by WH Smith, which is ace)... you can pre-order a copy at , if you wish... It's all very exciting, and should rack us up plenty more joinees. But equally exciting -- I'm thrilled to say that the book has already been bought by the American publisher Plume (an imprint of Penguin) which means that in April 2004 we will be one step closer to taking our message to right across America!
The word of the Karma Army continues to spread!
Well done to new Joinee Crook, who has decided to organise a Joinee Dating Service. Should be you single and in need of some hot joinee action, I am sure Joinee Crook will be able to help you. Check out the forum for more details. Well done, new Joinee Crook!
Well done to Gold Joinee Whitby, whose website, www.joinee.co.uk, continues to go from strength to strength. Well done, Gold Joinee Whitby!
Well done to Silver Joinee Woollven, who has secured a valuable slot in his local paper, which I hope will become the official Join Me newspaper for the whole of the Northampton catchment area. I will publish his efforts on this page when they are printed. Well done, Silver Joinee Woollven!
A huge thank you to all those fantastic joinees who took the time to pop down to London for a casual Join Meet organised by the News of the World...
Joinees Smin, Jones, Bond, Whitby, Jess, Woollven, Burnley, Peters, Sansom, Tarnesvik, Nicholls and Reardon joined journalist Nick Harding and watched in awe as he undertook many and varied Random Acts of Kindness under their gentle supervision. I, The Leader, made an impromptu speech at Speakers Corner and you will be glad to hear that several people joined up as a result.
A few of the first-ever copies of Join Me (the book) were presented to those joinees whose efforts to make it along exceeded my expectations.
Well done Joinees! The article on our day in London will appear in the News of the World on June 29th.