Mark White

I have been a fan of Twitter now for little over a year and most mornings my first thought is Twitter. What did I miss during the 6 hours sleep after I managed to drag myself away from the only blue sky and birds I've seen since going down with the 'Twitter bug'. Sad? Yes!

Over the past 15 years I have been lured virtually into every chat room, dating site, been offered the chance to put my most embarrassing moment ever on a tube outside the confines of my own 26" rectangle of humiliation and dipped my ambitious toe into just about any piece of water with a www. in front of it.

Now one thing I pride myself on is honesty, this is a no nonsense serious look at this newish and very serious phenomenon which is creating a world wide tsunami of exposure, it's even been suggested making it part of the UK schools curriculum. On an already technologically saturated planet it seems to me this particular 'Social activity' has attracted a new breed of keyboard tapper, the celebrity.

I must point out straight away and maybe even with the feeling of a little shallowness, that the first thing that attracted me to Twitter (or kidnapped me away from other 'Similar' sites) was that I could actually get to speak to someone that I grew up admiring, stars I had on my wall, comedy idols I watched on a Saturday night, radio presenters I woke up with every morning, soap stars that took over my TV schedule 5 nights a week, true legends of the stage and screen from both sides of the Atlantic were now closer than ever.

There is a great saying 'Be careful what you wish for'. Do you really want to know the real person behind your favourite characters, they might turn out to be just as boring and lead more mundane lives in some cases than your own. On the whole I have been very disappointed by a large number of celebrities on here, but some, which I will get to later, that I have genuinely warmed to.

What is it with some that drives people to want the most followers? Chris Moyles is one example of wanting or needing his ego fed, he has 466,463 followers, he is following 40 of which the majority are associates from radio, and others from the entertainment world. He is not following 'anyone' he doesn't already know and the only time he tweets is to say something about what he is doing on the radio, then on his show he talks about twitter saying how he hasn't got time to follow people or talk to them when they do talk to him because there is 'Just too much information'.

Now I have used him as an example for no other reason than he is the perfect candidate to highlight a trend that is disappointing many other twitterers out there. He clearly doesn't 'Get it'. P Diddy you don't get it, all he ever goes on about is needing to feel the energy! we need our energy for ourselves we don't have any spare we are out making a living just to scrape by, get rid of some of the bling that will make it easier for you to walk and preserve some energy, no we are not 'With you'. MC Hammer you too, yes we know you are in the studio moving those heavy sliders up and down on the mixing desk, if you answered one of my tweets you would see that I have been offering to come and relieve you of such hard labour on more than 10 occasions. Yes yes I know I could simply click unfollow but i worry if I do i might miss that little nugget of wisdom.

There is another breed of tweeter, celebrity or not that uses Twitter purely as an advertising vehicle, they want to show us what they have to offer, maybe a service to help you write, maybe they have a book they want you to read, a charity event they want you to sponsor, or a show they are starring in, these are less intrusive than the celeb that just wants to talk about himself and what we already know.

Now we come to the 'Nearly Man' another celeb tweeter category in between.
Jimmy Carr epitomises this, he nearly gets it, he is entertaining, I think we all wait to see his next twitpic accompanied by a unique observation that has the signature of Jimmy Carr's’ incredible mind written all over it. He entertains us but we don't get to talk to him, but he does almost get it.

Adam Woodyatt, Stephen Fry, Matt Lucas, Jane Goldman (Mrs Wossy) Yes she is a person in her own right, I’m not implying she isn’t by calling her Mrs Wossy, so much so that she has recently been very absent from Twitter but can prove she has been working extremely hard with the release of ‘Kick Ass’ which she wrote the screenplay for. Russell Grant, Sally Thomsett (Not so much recently) Bill Bailey, they all 'Get it', they are interested in other people, they answer questions, they send pics of what they are doing, they involve us in their lives, they set us little tasks to perform, Phil Jupitus is the twitter master at getting your brain working, as is Matt Lucas, Phil often starts little word games and Matt will often get you composing a poem. These are all celebrities with thousands of followers and they find the time to give us some nice tweetment from time to time, I salute and thank you.

I'm not suggesting every celeb should involve us in their private lives, but I do think that those that sign up to Twitter and then only want to tell us what we already know about them is not interesting, we know your show is on tonight, if we watch or listen to you it's because we like you, that's why we are trying to connect with you, we don't want to read the TV times on Twitter, we want to get to know the person behind the performers we adore.

I can remember my first few weeks on twitter were spent trying to follow Stephen The Twitter God Fry, (who incidentally is still not following me) But why is it so important that they follow me? It’s not like he will say “Oh Mark let’s be friends, come and have coffee with me, meet me after tonight's Qi recording and we can catch up”. So what is it then, I think it is something rather sad and something I do not suffer alone. I have seen many occasions when people have their day made so worthwhile and they are incomplete awe of getting their tweet replied to by a famous tweeter. I have done it myself. OK later I have thought how insignificant this particular moment in my life was not so important in the grand scheme of things but it gave me that little boost i needed to my ego at the time.

I have even found myself getting upset when I haven’t had a reply to something I thought deserved a remark, surely that will make someone laugh or get some kind of reaction. I would stare at the screen for half an hour, check my replies, perhaps it’s froze, log out, even restart the lap top, surely now it will show up! Then I realised, my tweet wasn’t important to anyone apart from me and my search for my ego to be rubbed. I thought this was my opportunity to get closer to the people I had admired and in some cases written letters to in the past in the hope of getting a break into the entertainment world. It's that feeling you get every time you see those words 'What are you doing' knowing the next 140 characters you type in that box could change your life forever, and that is no exaggeration, it could.

Twitter came along like a vehicle which got you up close and almost personal with your childhood hero, no longer did you have to stalk them around the streets or wait outside their place of work to give them your script idea, you can do it legally online without having to leave your chair, while watching them on TV or listening to them on radio, only its not stalking, it's 'Following' which is perfectly legal. I wonder if there is anyone using Twitter that isn't on it for one or both of these reasons;To hopefully chat to a celebrity or promote their business.

OK OK maybe you live in hope of being one of the lucky ones that for reasons still a mystery to me receive a free laptop.I wonder how many people (I'm one) spend hours on there in the let's face it better than average hope that they get to speak to Sir Stephen of Twitteringshire, or 'Wossy' yes Jonathan Ross found the site that was to be called Tritter but then the creators thought lets not be cwawl to wossy, lets give him the chance to pwonounce one thing that to him sounds like there's an R in it cowwectly, come on he is a broadcasting God, if ever they were to hold an event inside the pearly gates Jonathan Ross would be the one stood at the golden lectern facing the crowd, yes even he can warm up an already dead crowd and of course his wife who i mentioned earlier @ferretprincess when not writing books or screenplays can also be spotted twittering, making up one of the nicer celebrity couples to have caught the ‘Twitter Bug’. America has it's own twitter royalty couple in Aston Kutcher @Aplusk and Demi Moore @MrsKutcher who have over 7.2 million followers collectively. Ellen DeGeneres is another from acrosss the pond with in excess of 4 million devotees hanging on her every word.

Other famous Twitterers you can find being followed by the twitteratzi include President Obama, BoJo the mayor of London, Britney Spears, radio mountaineer star Fearne Cotton, Terry Wogan can be found telling you about his new ipod, Sally Thomsett bless her from 'Man about the house' still tweets occasionally,Adam Woodyatt, (Ian Beale) Russell with his quaint and amazing 'Brand' of humour and even Jordan and Peter Andre can be followed, though not often at the same time anymore, although when they were together they lived most of their life in the glare of twitter amongst other TV channels and magazines.

I think twitters Mr nice guy is Jason Manford, a comedian from Manchester who is probably the biggest celebrity user of the social network site and i do actually feel sorry for him more than any other Twitter user famous or not, he has to cope with a tremendous amount of tweets fired at him from every angle but his bullet proof image copes with the majority of unamusing amunition with his quick fire cheeky chappy charm and wit. I have tried to put myself in his position and think what it must feel like to get bombarded with wave after wave of what is generally tweets such as "I saw the show and thought it was brilliant", or "I thought the shirt you wore on stage was horrible", what can he say to either? That's when I feel sorry for the celebrity, but again you have to weigh it up, does he set himself up for critisism because of his want for publicity, I guess it's something that will be argued forever more.

Phillip Schofield is another favourite among the twitterers and is one of the more active celebrity tweeters, he has over 329,000 followers and give him credit he actually follows over 3,200 back, good on you phillip, if you watch carefully he is quite the twitter addict and he will often tweet just moments before he goes live on TV and during commercial breaks, sometimes even between features. Tim Lovejoy from Something for the weekend, he tweets on various subjects and is quite a witty guy. Stan Collymore is or should i say was a new addition to celebtwittyville but lasted about as long as one of his relationships due to the fact that, well, he kept getting stick about previous relationships but it was more to do with the fact that he was getting abuse for not replying to anyone. And that IS very annoying, the worst kind of tweeter is one who just tweets like they are not actually talking to anyone, all he ever went on about was going on Talksport radio and you can call him on such and such a number, he really didn’t ‘Get’ Twitter
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A Few fakes sneak through the Twitter detector and those few fakers that do are usually quickly caught and sent back to the streets to do their stalking. I have seen fads come and go, chat rooms which started out as nothing more than somewhere to chat about things you couldn't chat to your parents about, or a place where you could practice your chatting up a member of the opposite sex, well any sex actually, you could never be sure what you were getting, there were rooms for everything you could ever want, unfortunately they always turned into everything you didn’t want. I am now a twitter insomniac, with more than a cup of coffee keeping me awake, ah well I have someone to tell what I am drinking, and if I become as sad as some people on there I can twitprick it to show i am actually drinking a cup of coffee, well come on, who would believe you if you didn’t prove it with photographic evidence.

All sad and done Twitter is nothing more than a bit of fun, is it? Well I have met some people on there who have become good friends, one special one who has just helped me through a mid twitter crisis, @marksporter has known hardship more than i hope i ever have to face, a survivor of cancer he campaigns for the health of others, something that has become a part of my life now, we will climb a mountain together in the summer in aid of mens testicular cancer, so if that's all that comes out of my twitter experience, all the 'Pain and anguish' I suffered because of the lack of replies and appreciation I never received will all of been worthwhile because of that one friendship. There is fun to be had and friendships to be made, just don't be surprised or disappointed when it doesn't come from a celebrity