There's only one way to settle this - Twight!

Barely a day seems to go by these days without two people loosely related to today's celebrity culture having a right old pop at each other via the medium of the Twitter.

Back in the good old days - pre-2006 to be precise - if two people had issues with each other they would meet in a predetermined location, strip to the waist and fight to the death. Now though, it's the done thing to pick on each other online, while your myriad sycophantic followers gorge on the festival of misspellings and name-calling. We've had Kelly Osbourne's ex taking the piss out of her while she was at Wino's funeral, Rory McIlroy and a golf correspondent trading e-blows, and Sir Alan apparently having a go at just about anyone who dares to disagree with him.

Don't get me wrong, if someone brings your integrity or sexual orientation into question over that Internet, you've every right to tell them to bog off, but is this really what the creator of Twitter had in mind when he set it up? I can imagine the planning meeting:


"I've got a right idea"

"Go on"

"What?"

"Tell us about your idea"

"Oh yeah. How about a place to write a short message about what you're up to, or your opinion of the latest celebrity death, and people can subscribe to it to get real-time updates to their mobile phone when they should be working?"

"Sounds wank"

"Yeah, well I'm doing it anyway. How else will we know what Amanda Holden thinks of the Libyan crisis?"


It seems to be another one of those Internet fads which starts under a blaze of glory, with Stephen Fry endorsing it, then it all gets a bit boring, as someone uses it to catch their spouse shagging around, or a company finds out their prospective employer likes ear sex and Nazis. After a year or so, it becomes embedded in the day-to-day rituals of people who say 'aks' instead of 'ask' and people over the age of 30 are condemned for likening it to Ceefax.

At the end of the day, people are always going to disagree. Some of the greatest inventions known to man came from two people with opposing views striving to prove the other wrong (probably). Quite why we're supposed to give a shit about it though is anyone's guess, but then if you're ill enough to want to follow Fearne Cotton's online existence, you haven't really got any cause for complaint if you ask me. And I know you will.