It's a web mystery – a true whodunit. The Telegraph reports that a civil servant has been sacked for posting to a website about Hazel Blears. But we can't find the text. And nor can the site where it's meant to have been posted. (Update: the mystery has been solved - though questions remain: see this subsequent post. But first, read on.)

It's alleged that the woman was sacked for "gross misconduct" for posting on Theyworkforyou.com (the site that turns Hansard into something you can use) for adding a comment to a Hazel Blears reference to the effect that "You are only sorry that you have been caught. You are a disgrace (including all the other honourable members). Why haven't you been sacked?"

Theyworkforyou points out that it would never have revealed who the person was, and moreover that that comment has never appeared on TWFY, and:

There is no comment on TheyWorkForYou containing the text quoted in that article, nor anything like it, nor has there ever been. Nor in fact (as we've checked), on HearFromYourMP, WriteToThem, or WhatDoTheyKnow. Only one comment has been left on any contribution by Hazel Blears in 2009, and it's definitely not related to this. 27 comments were left on 13th May, the date the comment was apparently posted; we've read them all and they're all nothing to do with this.

What's more, adds Tom Steinberg of MySociety, which set up TWFY:

No journalist bothered to contact us before running the story, and what we do know is that the implication that mySociety would merrily hand over sensitive personal data that ends up in getting someone sacked, without fighting tooth and nail for their privacy every inch of the way, is a complete misinterpretation of the way we work and the things we hold most dear.

This is serious: if newspapers run stories like this where facts like that are wrong, and don't correct them, reputations can be damaged.

But the mystery deepens. Why? Because that text doesn't appear anywhere on Google except in sites that are referring to the Telegraph article. (Including this one, now.) And we trust Google, right?

OK, since we don't necessarily, let's hand the job to the new kid on the block, Microsoft's Bing. Waddya say, Bing?

Nope, not there either.

So the Telegraph is saying that someone wrote something on a site. Except the something that is written doesn't appear on the site, and can't be found anywhere else. That's extremely odd by anyone's standards.

Of course it could have all been made so much easier if the Telegraph had included a link in its physical and web story to the offending comment.

But it didn't – although it did include backlinks to its own stories about Ms Blears.

If anyone can find the text - or what could reasonably be described as its original – could they post a link here?

Then again, if the Telegraph can have imaginary journalists... but no, that's unthinkable.