The Bear Mask Comes Off (Sort Of)

Two Years of Pseudonymous Growling, Grammar Corrections, and Mild Anxiety - Now Officially HR-Approved.

So. I have some news.

I came out today at work.

No, not that kind of coming out - my colleagues have known I’m a raging homosexual for years now. You can’t exactly keep that one under wraps when you’ve been making theatrical comments about people’s shirt choices in the lift, correcting their musical theatre references since day three, and once paused a meeting to explain why Evita is superior to Cats (and why you should never trust anyone who says otherwise). By the time you’ve organised the office Eurovision sweepstake and been caught humming the overture from Gypsy in the kitchen, the element of surprise is long gone.

No. This was a different kind of coming out.

Today was the day I told my boss and our comms team that, for the past two years, I’ve been living a double life online - not as a spy or a criminal mastermind, but as a political commentator. I write long-form explainers, dissect media narratives, and occasionally pick very public fights with politicians and pundits. I just happen to do all of that under the guise of a bear.

Which, in retrospect, is probably not a sentence anyone expects to hear at work.

I didn’t do this because I’m all of a sardine ready to link my real name to all of this - that’s still very much not on the table - but because I did feel that it was time to check, officially, that what I’ve been doing is above board, because, I’ll be honest: there’s been a low-level hum of anxiety about it for a while.

Why now?

Over the past couple of weeks, from just before I want on holiday, I've had a few hacking attempts on some of my accounts. Nothing's been breached, but it's… not pleasant, knowing there's someone actively trying to poke their nose into your stuff.

And yes, I know exactly who's behind it.

I’ll just say that when you spend your time writing about certain political figures, occasionally those figures may just develop an interest in finding out who you are. My precautions have held so far - I've been borderline paranoid about two-factor authentication, randomised passwords, and not leaving breadcrumbs anywhere - but I'm not naive enough to think I'm invincible.

The thing about this kind of low-level harassment is that it gets under your skin in ways you don't expect. It's not necessarily the technical concern - though that's real enough - it's the psychological weight of knowing someone out there is actively trying to unmask you. Every login notification makes you pause. Every security alert gets your immediate, undivided attention. You start second-guessing things you've posted, wondering if you've been too specific about a location or too revealing about a detail.

If the so-called "worst" happened and my identity slipped out, I didn't want the added panic of wondering if I'd just blown up my career along with it. Better to have that conversation now and on my terms, than to be scrambling for damage control later. So I decided it was time to bite the bullet and have the conversation.

The conversation itself

First stop: our comms team.

I phoned them up and said something along the lines of, “Right, this might sound a little bit odd, but I have a side project you should probably know about. For the past two years or so, I’ve been online quite a bit as a pseudonymous political commentator who happens to be a bear. Not a real bear, obviously - I mean, I’m pretending to be a bear on the internet. A bear who writes about politics, occasionally roars at cabinet ministers, gets into unreasonably heated arguments about grammar with strangers on Twitter, and once spent an entire evening fighting about the geopolitical significance of Bake Off to a man with a Union Jack in his bio. You know, just, kind of normal bear stuff.”

This was followed by a pause.

And then, to my enormous relief, they said "Oh, okay" in the same tone you'd use if someone told you they were popping out for a sandwich.

It probably helped somewhat that I was already positively gleaming with sweat from the 31.5-degree heat in my office (again), so I looked appropriately nervous and contrite throughout the conversation. We had a look together through some posts, I explained the kind of topics I cover (politics, media, misinformation the occasional recipe), and they reassured me that none of it looks to be breaching policy.

They did give me a brief rundown of the sort of things that would get me fired - basically, don't be libellous, don't claim to speak for the organisation, and don't do anything that brings us into disrepute.

Standard stuff, really.

They did also add that "the fact that you've come to us shows you're far more sensible than most people," which was both reassuring and slightly alarming. Apparently, proactive honesty about your internet bear persona puts you in the top percentile of employee judgment calls. The bar, it seems, is underground.

Their only advice was to let my direct boss know. Not to share my account details, not to give him chapter and verse, just a courtesy call.

So I did just that.

His reaction?

Another "Oh, okay," followed by an immediate pivot to the actual business of the day. Which, honestly, was exactly what I'd hoped for - polite if somewhat vague interest followed by indifference.

The Relief

It wasn't as though this was necessarily keeping me up at night, but it was a small, sharp stone in my shoe - a tiny, persistent awareness that there could be consequences, even if I didn't think I was doing anything wrong. Now, that stone is mercifully gone.

I've realised that a fair bit of the anxiety around secrecy is in the build-up - imagining scenarios where you're called into the CEO's office, made to sit under a bright light, and grilled about why you once called Nigel Farage "a man who looks like he smells faintly of wet tweed." In reality, the people you work with mostly just want to get on with their jobs.

It's also been oddly grounding to be reminded that, at the end of the day, this is just me - writing, thinking, occasionally swearing, and trying to make sense of the chaos around us. I've always known I was within my rights to do it. But now I know I know, if that makes sense?

And there's something liberating about that distinction. The difference between thinking you're probably fine and actually knowing you're fine. It's the difference between tiptoeing around a potential problem and walking normally because you've confirmed there isn't one. I can write with a bit more confidence now, knowing that the professional safety net is actually there if I ever need it.

Why I’m telling you this (and why the bear mask stays on)

Part of it is transparency - if you’ve been reading me for a while, you’ll know I’m fairly open about what’s going on in my world (within reason). I’ll tell you when I’m anxious, when I’ve made a mistake, when I’ve been shouted at online, and when I’ve got something worth celebrating.

But it’s also because this newsletter feels, for better or worse, like a little community. Sharing that I’ve crossed one more item off the list of “possible sources of stress” feels like the sort of update you’d give to friends over coffee.

Just to clarify as well, this isn’t me announcing I’m about to ditch the nomme du guerre. I still like the separation between me and The Bear - it’s a kind of creative permission slip, a way of getting into the right headspace for writing without dragging the rest of my life into it. And, frankly, it’s fun.

My ursine nom de guerre has let me be braver in some ways - more willing to prod at the soft spots of political narratives, to swipe at public figures without the baggage of “Oh, so-and-so from work said that.” But now, it’s nice to know that if the mask ever does slip, I won’t also be scrambling to update my CV.

I do think it’s worth adding that the anonymity isn’t only about creative freedom, though. There are more serious reasons I keep my work and writing separate. In my previous healthcare roles, some of the public-facing work I did attracted the wrong kind of attention - death threats, to be blunt about it. Nothing that ever materialised, thankfully, but enough to make me very conscious about keeping my family out of the line of fire. The pseudonym isn’t just a literary flourish, it’s also a practical safety measure.

Wrapping up

So yes - today, The Bear came out at work. Nobody fainted. Nobody clutched their pearls or threw themselves onto a fainting sofa. My boss didn't even ask me what my Twitter handle was (and for that I am profoundly grateful).

It's funny how something that feels huge in your head can, in real life, be barely a blip on someone else's radar. That doesn't make the anxiety any less real while you've got it, but it does put it in perspective afterwards.

And if nothing else, it's a reminder that sometimes the best way to stop worrying about "what if" is to just get the conversation over with - and discover that, actually, the answer is "Oh, okay." The people in your life are generally more reasonable, more understanding, and more focused on their own concerns than your anxious brain would have you believe.

Most of the disasters we imagine never materialise. And when they don't, you're left wondering why you spent so much energy worrying about them in the first place.

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A Bit of Housekeeping

While I’ve got you here - Bearly Politics has just passed 4,400 subscribers. Which is incredible, so thank you. Every time I see that number creep up, I have a moment of “Really? People want to read this?” But apparently, you do. Thank you.

For those who are new: Bearly Politics has a soft paywall. Posts are free for a week after publication, then they go into the archive. Paid subscribers (£3.99/month, £40/year) can read everything, and founding members (£80/year) get that plus a signed copy of my book. Everyone gets to keep a copy of the posts in their email inboxes. That won’t change.

Speaking of founding members: there are still a few of you who haven’t sent me your addresses. Please do - I promise I’m not going to turn up at your door unannounced, I just want to get your books posted out.

Also, I know this is second post for today, the other one was auto-scheduled for this afternoon, sorry for spamming your inbox, I’ll try and do better. Sorry.

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