Several things astonish me about this whole affair. One is the number of people who think that this was a calculated ploy to be ome famous. Several are still claiming that to be the case, a week later, although my real name has never shown up anywhere in any of the stories. Indeed, I still got 2-3 abusive tweets today, a week after the peace was made!

Another is the fact that the press picked up on the issue at all. Rather worrying is the fact that the BBC picked up on it within an hour of Stephen’s tweet about leaving and despite acknowledging his bi-polarity and the fact that he was having an off-day, decided to make it a topic for tittle-tattle? This would hardly be conducive to making him feel any better… Also, none of them considered the fact that perhaps I might be psychologically/mentally fragile but of course that’s irrelevant because I’m not famous, and people slinging mud at me from all directions is just par for the course.

Luckily for them, I have had an online presence for over 15 years and have been involved in scenes like these several times (though admittely without the rest of the world looking on) and could take it. Furthermore, surely if anyone at the BBC had ANY kind of experience of online communities, they’d know that people (heck, even famous people) threaten to leave several times a day, only to return as soon as they are bored.

If only as a licence-fee payer, I find the whole attitude of the BBC quite bizarre.

Alan Davies’s involvement in all this is a separate issue. I have no problem with him wading in to the debate, but the tone of his contributions was more than suspect. Apart from stooping to the level of the mob and calling me a wanker and a moron (without actually having read what I had said in the first place!) at one point he also condoned physical violence.

He’s not just an ordinary user, he’s a celebrity twitterer with 100,000 followers. People have assumed that I have demanded an apology from him – I haven’t. I’m not quite that full of myself! I have only offered him the option to apologise as an alternative to living up to his own principles and being prepared to say those things to my face, as per “the Essex way” (his phrase). He has since returned to Twitter and his only acknowledgment of the affair is to comment that he’s deleted most of what he had said, as his insults weren’t as entertaining as some other people’s. I really do like the fact that as far as he’s concerned the whole point of the exercise was to provide entertainment to Alan Davies!

Hope you are feeling better soon.