A London journalist wanted to interview former New York mayor Bill de Blasio. Wine importer Bill DeBlasio responded.

A London journalist thought former New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio was being approached for an interview about Democratic mayoral candidate Zohran Mamdani. The person they actually contacted was Bill DeBlasio, a wine importer from Huntington, Long Island.

Instead of correcting the journalist’s mistake, DeBlasio decided to have a little fun.

“I never said I was the mayor”

It was DeBlasio’s email address, which bore his full name, that landed his opinion of Mamdani in the pages of the Times of London.

A journalist reached out via email and the wine importer happily accepted and shared some criticism of Mamdani.

“I never said I was the mayor. He sent it to ‘Mr. de Blasio’ and I responded as ‘Bill DeBlasio,'” DeBlasio said. “I spelled my name correctly, no small D, you know. The big D, you know. The way my grandparents told us we were supposed to spell our name.”

The newspaper said they retracted the story “after discovering that our reporter had been misled by an individual falsely claiming to be the former mayor of New York.”

“I just can’t believe that, you know, I hate to call them lazy, but they didn’t check and he didn’t address me as mayor,” DeBlasio said. “It was a bit of a sloppy report, you know, obviously they didn’t vet me. I never thought it would go this far.”

“It was literally a surreal feeling”

The man truly surprised by the interview was de Blasio, have the support of Major Mamdani.

“This is what’s so strange: I still have people come up to me and say, ‘Oh, I see you changed your mind.’ I’m like, no, I never did. It was literally a surreal feeling,” de Blasio said. “I’m looking at a headline. I’m looking at a quote. A newspaper I’ve never spoken to, a journalist I’ve never contacted.”

DeBlasio said the confusion is nothing new.

“It’s been brutal to have the same name as the former mayor, especially an unpopular one,” DeBlasio said. “It’s been entertaining. I think I’ve handled it with humor and had a bit of fun over the years.”

He says he has learned to play along.

“I’ve been on charity golf outings, and there was a bunch of firefighters and police officers, and they were like, ‘Oh, the longest drive, Bill DeBlasio,’ and they booed me. You know, they started booing,” he said.

In fact, the former mayor and the wine importer once met at a Mets game.

“He says to me, ‘So how bad is it that he has the same name as me?’ And I was like, ‘Dude, you’re killing me,'” DeBlasio said. “And he stopped for a second, like he was taken aback, he didn’t know what to say. And then he just looked at me and put his hand on my shoulder. He said, ‘I’m so sorry.'”

But confusion has its advantages.

“You could call any restaurant in Manhattan and say, I’m making a reservation for, you know, Bill DeBlasio. And sometimes they would say to my wife, ‘Are you calling from the mayor’s office?’ And my wife would just say, ‘I’d rather not say it,'” DeBlasio said. “A couple of times I had to show my driver’s license to prove I was Bill DeBlasio.”

DeBlasio points out that he had the name first. The former mayor’s name was Warren Wilhelm Jr. and he later changed it.