Nick Gill
Timeline correction made on 19 Sept 2026: Nick Gill was 19 when he answered the job advert placed by John Donovan (Jan 1998), still 19 at the time of the London Evening Standard article (Sept 1998), and 20 by the time the trial opened (15 June 1999) at the Royal Courts of Justice— See pages 5 and 6 of the trial transcript.
By John Donovan
For more than a quarter of a century, my father Alfred Donovan and I became publicly associated with an extraordinary internet campaign against one of the world’s largest energy companies.
Our names appeared in newspapers. Shell executives knew who we were. Lawyers knew who we were. Whistleblowers knew where to find us.
But behind much of the machinery that allowed the campaign to function was another man whose name rarely appeared in the headlines.
Nick Gill.
This is the story of the computer “whiz kid” who answered a small newspaper advertisement and ended up helping to build and maintain an internet operation that Shell itself would later describe internally in remarkably complimentary terms.
It is a story assembled from contemporaneous emails, correspondence and other documents accumulated over decades.
And it begins before Google, Facebook or Twitter even existed.
THE ADVERTISEMENT
By the late 1990s, my family’s commercial relationship with Shell had spectacularly disintegrated.
Don Marketing, the promotional games company I co-founded, had worked directly with Shell from 1981. We devised major forecourt promotions for the oil giant, but the relationship eventually descended into repeated litigation over intellectual property and contractual disputes.
I had realised something else: the emerging internet offered an entirely new way for an individual to publish information about a multinational corporation without needing a newspaper proprietor, television station or printing press.
There was one problem.
I needed someone who actually understood computers.
So I placed an advertisement in a local newspaper seeking what I described as a “computer whiz kid.”
A young man called Nick Gill answered it.
That apparently mundane event would have consequences lasting decades.
In notes prepared years later for television producers, I described Nick as having become responsible for “designing and implementing all of our website activity”. Another account in the archive says he designed and set up twelve Shell-related websites.
Nick had joined the campaign.
He has remained involved for nearly 30 years.
1998: NICK WALKS INTO SOMETHING MUCH BIGGER THAN COMPUTERS
Nick’s role did not remain confined to keyboards and websites for long.
During the SMART litigation against Shell, events occurred which my family regarded as deeply disturbing.
The documents recount undercover enquiries, threats and burglaries during the run-up to the litigation. They identify individuals using the names “Charles Hoots”, “Christopher Phillips” and “Daniel Wilson”, and describe an anonymous telephone call in June 1998 in which I say threats were made against me and my family.
Then came the burglaries.
My principal witness, Roger Sotherton, reported that his home had been burgled and his Shell-related files examined.
My solicitor Richard Woodman subsequently told me that his home had also been burgled.
Then, on 13 October 1998, it was my turn.
My home had been broken into.
According to the account preserved in the archive, nothing was stolen, but documents had been disturbed — including material Shell had unsuccessfully sought through court proceedings.
And the document records one particularly relevant fact:
Nick Gill was with me when I discovered the burglary.
That does not establish who committed the burglary.
It is important to state equally prominently what happened when suspicions were raised:
Shell denied any involvement in the series of burglaries.
That distinction has always mattered.
What can safely be said is that the young computer enthusiast who had answered a newspaper advertisement suddenly found himself witnessing the aftermath of an episode in an already bitter commercial dispute with one of the world’s biggest corporations.
1999: FROM COMPUTER WHIZ KID TO THE HIGH COURT
Nick’s involvement became even more extraordinary the following year.
He wasn’t a solicitor.
He wasn’t a barrister.
Yet my contemporaneous account records that Nick represented my company Don Marketing during the eventful High Court trial in the summer of 1999. See pages 5 and 6 of the trial transcript.
Nick was 20 years old at the time but looked much younger. He was the subject of some friendly banter between the barristers.
The Donovan v Shell High Court trial commenced on Tuesday, 15 June 1999, in Court 58 of the Thomas More Building at the Royal Courts of Justice in London, before Mr Justice Laddie. The case was John Alfred Donovan v Shell UK Ltd, Case No. DD04199. The trial ended on 2nd July.
The Judge Mr Justice Laddie, later admitted, after some unexpected drama, that he had lost control of the trial.
Consider the unlikely journey.
Local newspaper advert.
Computer enthusiast.
Website builder.
Burglary aftermath.
High Court litigation involving Shell.
And Nick was still only near the beginning of his involvement.
THE INTERNET CAMPAIGN GROWS
As the years passed, the internet operation became increasingly sophisticated.
What had begun as a way of publishing our side of a dispute developed into a large archive of Shell-related news, leaked documents, commentary and contributions from Shell insiders and critics.
Among those contributors was former Shell geologist Dr John Huong.
The archive records that in June 2004 eight companies within the Royal Dutch Shell Group sued Huong over alleged defamatory material published in his name on our website. Huong, who had worked for Shell for 29 years, also pursued wrongful-dismissal litigation against Shell. The litigation was eventually settled.
The websites were no longer merely publishing our dispute with Shell.
They had become platforms through which other people with information or grievances concerning the company could publish material.
Behind that expanding technical infrastructure was Nick.
2005: THE EMAIL TRAIL
By 2005, Nick’s role starts appearing directly in surviving email correspondence.
An email dated 11 July 2005, for example, was sent by Nick to me with the subject:
“Emailing: huong”
It is a tiny surviving fragment, but an illuminating one. It places Nick directly inside the machinery surrounding material connected with one of the most contentious Shell whistleblower disputes of the period.
The significance is cumulative.
Nick wasn’t someone retrospectively inserted into the story.
His name keeps appearing in the documentary trail.
2006: NICK TRIES TO PUT ROYALDUTCHSHELLPLC.COM INTO GOOGLE NEWS
One document perhaps captures Nick’s role better than almost anything else in the archive.
On 25 August 2006, Nick submitted RoyalDutchShellPlc.com for inclusion in Google News.
This wasn’t an email written by me praising Nick years afterwards.
It was Nick himself describing the operation contemporaneously to Google.
His submission said the site possessed nearly 10,000 searchable news articles relating to Shell and other oil supermajors.
He explained that original stories about Big Oil were being published under the ShellNews.net name almost every day.
He also told Google that the site had several authors, including former Shell geologist Dr John Huong and Nigerian contributors Dumale Tanee and Ben Wuloo Ikari.
Google declined the application at that time but said it would log the site for future consideration.
The following morning Nick forwarded Google’s response to me with the distinctly Nick-like commentary:
“This arrived in my mailbox this morning :o(“
The reproduced email on the relevant PDF page visually confirms both Google’s reply and Nick’s original submission beneath it.
That document is important.
It shows Nick wasn’t merely fixing broken links or resetting passwords.
He was actively trying to develop the publishing reach of the operation.
2006: WHEN THE WEBSITE CAME UNDER INTERFERENCE
Other correspondence from the period shows Nick dealing with the less glamorous realities of running a controversial website.
In November 2006, I corresponded with Shell insider James Wood about interference affecting the site’s Live Chat facility.
I told Wood that I would speak to “our Nick”.
The correspondence records that Nick had already managed to prevent whoever was responsible from inserting live links.
We did not establish from that incident alone who was responsible for the interference.
But once again the documentary significance is straightforward:
when the website encountered a technical problem, Nick was the person defending the machinery.
2007: THE WEBSITE SHELL COULDN’T IGNORE
Then the documentary record takes an extraordinary turn.
From March 2007 onwards, Subject Access Requests generated Shell internal correspondence concerning our activities.
According to the material preserved in the archive, a Shell internal email dated 9 March 2007 concerned the creation of a counter-measures team. Another dated 21 March 2007 referred to an IT project monitoring emails from Shell servers globally to Donovan and monitoring web traffic to determine internal traffic to our main website.
But perhaps the most delicious document is an internal Shell email dated 20 March 2007.
Its author described John and Alfred Donovan as making it their mission to embarrass, belittle and criticise Shell — adding that they did so “quite well.”
Then came the corporate compliment from heaven.
The Shell author described RoyalDutchShellPlc.com as:
“an excellent source of group news and comment”
and recommended it above Shell’s own internal group communications.
Think about that.
A website built and maintained outside Shell — and devoted substantially to scrutinising and criticising Shell — was being recommended inside Shell as a better source of Shell news and commentary than Shell’s own communications.
That wasn’t our advertising copy.
That was Shell’s assessment.
And behind the technical architecture that made the website possible was the young man who had answered that newspaper advertisement years earlier.
Nick Gill.
2007: NICK AT THE HOUSES OF PARLIAMENT
Nick’s involvement was not confined to maintaining websites behind a computer screen.
In July 2007, the One World Trust’s Accountability in Action newsletter devoted a substantial feature to Royaldutchshellplc.com, under the heading “The power of a website.” The Trust described the site as performing a watchdog function, gathering complaints about Shell and demonstrating how an individual website could help hold a global organisation to account. It said that, with the right contacts, a gripe site could become much more than a soapbox and could have a profound impact on a multinational organisation.
A few months later, I was invited to the launch of the One World Trust’s 2007 Global Accountability Report in the Grand Committee Room at the Houses of Parliament.
I asked whether the invitation could be extended to my colleague Nick Gill.
The surviving correspondence provides neat documentary confirmation. On 3 December 2007, the One World Trust replied that it would be happy to invite Nick and said it looked forward to seeing us both. The event took place the following evening, 4 December 2007.
The programme was impressive. Speakers included Lord Malloch-Brown, then Minister for Africa, Asia and the UN at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office and formerly Deputy Secretary-General of the United Nations; Robert Lloyd of the One World Trust; Robert Corcoran, Vice-President for Corporate Citizenship at General Electric; and Aidan Timlin of Christian Aid. The event was chaired by Baroness Kennedy of The Shaws QC.
For Nick, the occasion provides another useful documentary snapshot.
The young man who had originally answered my advertisement for a “computer whiz kid” was no longer simply helping me construct websites. By 2007, he was accompanying me to the Houses of Parliament at an international accountability event where government, corporate and civil-society figures were represented — only months after the One World Trust had itself singled out our website as an example of the power of online accountability.
It is another small but telling piece of evidence that Nick was never merely a peripheral technical assistant.
He was part of the operation.
THE HOSTING WARS
The infrastructure itself became a battleground.
The archive describes difficulties involving hosting companies BlueHost.com and MyHosting.com in 2007 and says Shell’s then General Counsel for Exploration & Production, Keith Ruddock, confirmed in correspondence that Shell was behind actions involving the hosting companies. The archive links this episode with a Shell team involving Corporate Affairs Security.
Whatever interpretation is placed upon Shell’s motives, the practical consequence for the website operation was obvious.
Someone had to keep the sites online.
Someone had to understand domains, servers, redirects, hosting accounts, software and the countless other things invisible to readers until they stop working.
That was Nick’s world.
2009–2010: THE OPERATION BECOMES AN INSTITUTION
By 2009, the surviving records show a sprawling domain and hosting operation.
Correspondence with MyHosting concerning Cybergriping.com, for example, records the transfer of domains between hosting providers.
And by 2010, correspondence from outsiders demonstrates something else: Nick had become sufficiently established within the operation that third parties knew who he was.
An email dated 18 March 2010 from a correspondent using the name “Stash Catcher” thanked me for maintaining material on the website and ended:
“please say hi to Nick and Max for me”
The same PDF page contains a reproduced screenshot of RoyalDutchShellPlc.com as it appeared at the time — a substantial news-style website with navigation, archives, feeds, links and numerous published stories.
That visual matters.
It shows what “website activity” actually meant.
This was no longer a homemade page containing a few angry paragraphs about an oil company.
It had become a substantial publishing platform.
A DIGITAL HOME FOR WHISTLEBLOWERS AND LEAKS
Over time, the websites became repositories for information from Shell insiders and outside campaigners.
The archive describes material concerning Sakhalin II, Nigeria, the Corrib gas project in Ireland, Shell security operations and numerous other controversies.
Some of those claims remain allegations and should be treated as such.
But there is no ambiguity about the technical reality.
Every leaked document published had to live somewhere.
Every article needed a page.
Every searchable archive required infrastructure.
Every domain had to resolve.
Every hosting problem had to be fixed.
Every attempted disruption meant somebody had to get the operation working again.
The public saw John Donovan and Alfred Donovan.
Behind the screen was Nick Gill.
2012: “RESPONSIBLE FOR DESIGNING AND IMPLEMENTING ALL OF OUR WEBSITE ACTIVITY”
By around 2012, I was explaining Nick’s role to outsiders in unequivocal terms.
A document in the archive states:
“… Nick responded to an advert we placed in a local newspaper for a ‘computer whiz kid’ and has been responsible for designing and implementing all of our website activity since then.”
Another account says Nick had been responsible for designing and setting up all twelve Shell-related websites.
Those descriptions establish the scale of his contribution far more effectively than any retrospective embellishment could.
He wasn’t the chap who occasionally repaired my computer.
He was part of the infrastructure of the campaign.
2016–2018: STILL THERE
Years later, the correspondence continues.
A December 2016 email concerning domain redirection and problems with MyHosting was copied to Nick. It describes the frustrations involved in obtaining access needed for technical work on the sites.
Then there is a wonderfully mundane email from 21 May 2018.
I asked Nick, when he had “five minutes to spare”, to remove obsolete links from Cybergriping.com.
Among them were links to former gripe sites aimed at DHL, Dell, Starbucks and Verizon.
Nothing cloak-and-dagger there.
Nothing dramatic.
And that is precisely why the email is valuable.
Twenty years after Nick had entered the story, I was still sending him routine website-maintenance requests.
The relationship had endured.
2021: NICK AND JOE LYCETT
And still it continued.
In August 2021, television production company Rumpus Media was arranging filming involving comedian and presenter Joe Lycett.
The correspondence shows Nick was part of the arrangements.
A later email, dated 27 September 2021, concerned Nick’s invoice for transporting me from Colchester to Huntingdon for filming with Lycett at the Lord Protector pub on 2 September 2021.
Likewise, personal email addresses appearing throughout the archive have not been reproduced.
They add nothing to the historical record.
But the underlying correspondence adds something important.
More than two decades after that newspaper advertisement, Nick was still there.
THE NAME THAT WASN’T IN THE HEADLINES
There is an irony running through this history.
Shell knew about the Donovans.
Journalists knew about the Donovans.
Shell lawyers certainly knew about the Donovans.
Shell’s internal correspondence discussed the Donovans.
But an internet campaign does not survive for decades simply because somebody writes articles.
It needs infrastructure.
And the documents reveal the person behind much of that infrastructure.
Nick Gill.
The significance of his contribution isn’t based upon some grand title bestowed years afterwards.
It emerges organically from the documentary record:
1998 — he was present when I discovered the aftermath of the burglary at my home.
1999 — my account records him representing my company during the High Court proceedings.
2005 — he appears in correspondence involving Dr John Huong material.
2006 — he personally pitched RoyalDutchShellPlc.com to Google News, describing an archive approaching 10,000 articles.
2006 — he was dealing with interference affecting the website’s Live Chat facility.
2007 onwards — the website infrastructure he helped create existed while Shell internally discussed monitoring, counter-measures and the Donovan websites.
2010 — outside correspondents knew Nick sufficiently well to send greetings to him through me.
2012 — I described him as responsible for designing and implementing all our website activity.
2016 — he remained involved with hosting and domain issues.
2018 — he was still maintaining Cybergriping.com.
2021 — he remained personally involved while television producers filmed another chapter of the Shell story.
The evidence spans decades.
SHELL’S ACCIDENTAL TESTIMONIAL
Perhaps Nick’s best testimonial therefore came from the least likely source imaginable.
Shell itself.
A Shell internal email described RoyalDutchShellPlc.com as an excellent source of Shell group news and commentary and recommended it above the company’s own internal communications.
There can hardly be a better compliment to the people who built and maintained an independent watchdog website.
Shell may not have intended it as praise.
We’ll take it anyway.
FROM A LOCAL NEWSPAPER AD TO SHELL’S CORPORATE RADAR
There is something wonderfully improbable about the whole story.
A small businessman fighting an oil multinational decides he needs a website.
He puts an advert in a local newspaper for a computer whiz kid.
Nick Gill answers.
Then history takes over.
High Court litigation.
Whistleblowers.
Shell insiders.
Thousands of articles.
Hosting battles.
Domain disputes.
Google News.
International media coverage.
Corporate security.
Television crews.
And a website that Shell’s own people were apparently reading closely enough to recommend internally.
Nick never became the public face of the campaign.
That wasn’t his role.
He built things.
He fixed things.
He kept things working.
And when the technology changed, the websites changed with it.
The emails scattered throughout this archive provide something that memory alone cannot.
They leave footprints.
Date after date.
Year after year.
Nick is still there.
THE MAN BEHIND THE MACHINE
There are people whose contribution to a story can be measured in newspaper headlines.
Others can be measured by what continued working because they were there.
Nick belongs in the second category.
My father Alfred and I supplied much of the ammunition for the Shell campaign.
Whistleblowers supplied extraordinary information.
Journalists amplified stories.
Readers distributed them around the world.
But somebody had to build and maintain the digital machine that connected those things.
Nick Gill was that man.
The “computer whiz kid” advertisement could easily have produced nothing.
Instead, it produced a working relationship lasting decades.
And perhaps the most fitting monument to Nick’s contribution isn’t something I could write about him today.
It was written inside Shell.
The oil giant’s own correspondence described the website he helped make possible as an “excellent source” of Shell news and commentary.
Not bad for the bloke who answered a local newspaper ad.
Thank you, Nick.
Documentary note
This article is based primarily on correspondence and historical material contained in the JAD Nick Gill File. Where the underlying documents contain private email addresses, or other unnecessary personal data, those details have deliberately not been reproduced. Accounts concerning burglaries, surveillance, covert activity and responsibility for particular events are distinguished from established documentary facts; notably, Shell denied involvement in the 1998 burglaries.
Site-wide disclaimer also applies.
*This website and sisters royaldutchshellgroup.com, shellnazihistory.com, royaldutchshell.website, johndonovan.website, shellnews.net, and shellwikipedia.com, are owned by John Donovan - more information here. There is also a Wikipedia segment, the Shell DPA Files, "Shell and the Spies", the Shell Leaks files, the Independent Shell Archive, as well as books written and published by John Donovan - Kindle eBooks. Timeline of the Donovan Shell Feud. Toxic History of Royal Dutch Shell Group. Shell and the Donovans: The Full Media Record — 550+ Articles, 110 Books, 40 Years. *All conjured up by internet wizz, Nick Gill.
