The Afterword

Musings on the byways of popular culture

Menu

Navigation

You are here: Home / Forum / Twitter Triumphs

Comments

  1. Nice work. I got a reply (and a follow) from Craig Charles – aka Lister in Red Dwarf and (perhaps more impressively) Lloyd out of Coronation Street.

    He used to be a street poet and I tweeted an interview with him from an old NME.

  2. I was once watching Question Time and swearing at the participants on twitter in a fury, one of whom was former George Osborne lickspittle Danny Alexander of the Lib Dems, who I was being particularly mean about. Except I had got him mixed up with former Labour shadow foreign secretary Douglas Alexander who politely tweeted me to inform me that I had the wrong guy. I rather shamefacedly apologized and got a reply basically saying that this happened almost anytime Danny Alexander was on the telly.

  3. Last night I was tweeting pics of the day’s car boot finds, and Pete Paphides (who follows me) commented on one. About the Ventures’ Christmas album he said “That’s a great record”.

    Also, as mentioned before, Ian Penman and I often chat about records and our cats.

      • Pete Paphides is a wonderful force for good on Twitter. He sent me a very long DM once about something I was going on about.

        I agree about DB. Everybody’s free to use Twitter however they see fit, but he’s missing the point by never interacting with the plebs. Don’t forget, he used to lurk on the old Word site with a pseudonym, as if we wouldn’t be able to handle it if we knew it was him. In the end it drew more attention as people speculated more and more: YDFMD and all that.

        • DB does interact freely with his showbiz pals, however.

          Some time ago DM tweeted a picture of a 70s record store window in Berwick St (Musicland, I think it was) asking how many LPs sleeve in the window could be identified. I named several of them, but response was there none.

  5. David Hepworth wished me well once as I was going in for an operation a couple of years ago. Stuart Maconie is a occasional chatee on there. And Andrew Collins is an excellent debater about various subjects but mainly cats!

    • David Hepworth tweeted that “The Band” are listed as just “Band” on Spotify.

      I replied asking him how “The The” were listed on Spotify.

      He responded advising me that “The The” were listed as “The The”

      Lauren Laverne also replied once after I declared my undying love.

  7. I was amazed to find one morning that Mike Scott was following me in return and we have had few natters (not always true about not ‘meeting’ your heroes – he’s a genuinely cool guy and all round nice bloke). Also, David Crosby – funny, not afraid to voice his opinions and very cool – talked with him about Coltrane, George Harrison, Reincarnation and a few other things – a Facebook friend too now that he’s on there, and the other day Donovan started following me. His tweets are always kind and friendly too in the way he interacts with people.

    The most important thing though is the the small but significant group ofpeople I’ve met through social media that have now become genuine mutual real life friends, and I was once so cynical about the whole deal.

  8. Don Estelle frequently replies to my postings about his good self. @SingLofty
    He is probably impressed that I own 23 LPs that feature his vocal talents. Or worried.

  10. I went to a NY Knicks game a few years back. Dull as ditchwater as it turned out, not helped by the fact that I’d gone on my own. During the half time break, a local DJ – possibly quite well known – provided the entertainment. I tweeted that he was making me feel old and keeping me awake – the tweet didn’t tag him but it did mention his name. And about 30 secs after I pressed send I saw it float round the bottom of the giant video screen tube they have in the middle of Madison Square Garden, where it elicited a rather feeble “boo”.

    I’ve exchanged tweets with Andrew Collins, Robert Llewellyn and Right Said Fred – the latter only because of a conversation with others on here about Bernard Cribbins. And Duncan Bannatyne got very huffy with me about something to do with John Terry’s trial.

  12. Turns out that a few folk – who probably have Google alerts set up for their own name – are quite personable once you get to know them (or their staff*) online. Steve Lukather commented on a reference I made to the Tototastic plank-botherer, Neil Finn advised me on the correct length of an album, Dean Friedman corrected me on his choice of drugs in the seventies, and George RR Martin once re-tweeted a joke I’d made about Game of Thrones. Which was nice.

    Most of the best interactions though, are from civilians.

    *Cough* Stephen Fry.

    • A mate of mine used to work for a talent agency (and, in fact, now works for Twitter). A material part of his day job was supervising a small army of unpaid interns who would “oversee” the “talent”‘s Twitter account and other social media. Including some of the very “talent” named above.

      • We did indeed. It’s easy to forget that your sparkling bon mot might not read quite so well once it surfaces in someone’s timeline. A few people pitched in on my behalf (“I look forward to hearing The Blagger’s Guide to Over-Reacting to a Joke on Twitter” was one) and in the end we made up. He retweeted a comment I made about his Sysiphean journey home on South-East Rail only last week and I copped half a dozen disciples just on the back of that.

    • It’s not Twitter-based, although it’s apposite to the above, but I found myself unexpectedly on holiday, on a boat off Mexico this time last year, with an extremely lovely woman who turned out to be Dana Carvey’s wife.

      • Of course, it was unexpected that it was with her. I was fully expecting to go on holiday, what with booking all the flights and paying a boatload of cash etc…

        • Well, she’s an absolutely super lady, I shall say no more or less.
          It was a group (20+, plus crew) , organised holiday, on a boat for 11 days, not just me and her. Apologies if that wasn’t all that clear…
          No-one knew the actual identity of her husband until after we’d all gone our separate ways at the end, as she just alluded to the fact he was “something in comedy in LA” while on the boat.
          Needless to say, the mostly British group were bowled over when we all found out. Which is probably why she was very coy about it.

          The very same holiday has seen John Craven and Marc Riley on it in previous years.

  14. I had a long-ish twitter conversation with Joe Bonamassa about amps and, you guessed it, The Beano Album. He was bragging about some Beano “comic books” (as the Americans call them) which he’d picked up on tour in UK. Turns out they were crappy 80s issues. I tweeted my original 1966 issue and he got a little defensive about his own miserable modern Beanos.

    Then he tweeted a photo of part of his vast amp collection and I explained to him the origin of the UK built Park amplifier brand. He appeared not to know much about the history of Park and was most fulsome in his thanks for the info.

    For those who give a shit, Park was a 60s offshoot of Marshall, set up to service those music shops who had been excluded from Jim Marshall’s late 60s distribution deal with Rose-Morris. Park amps were really just Marshalls under another name with very slight differences. They only lasted a few years and are now hugely collectable.

      • Seems like it. Although clearly he could have afforded the real 1966 “Clapton” issue, I got the impression he didn’t really care that the comics he picked up were worthless recent copies. Just the fact that he had some “English” Beanos seemed to amuse him greatly.

        Which is strange when you think that he knows exactly what’s what in terms of originality when it comes to his massive guitar collection.

        • Seems that you and Joe were going down a very slippery path there, with you to blame for initially escalating the tension by needlessly humiliating him by tweeting your ’66 Beano. He then responded with his massive amps collection, but, thankfully, you appeared to have learnt the lessons from the ’62 Cuban Missile crisis, and defused the situation by distracting him with talk about an obscure make of amp.

  16. Oh and I got blocked and sworn at by Simon Pegg who was having a spat with someone about being a shortarse (he claimed not to be; evidence suggested otherwise – not least the evidence that he was really cross about it).

    I tweeted (without @-ing him) a photo of me standing next to him at a Charlotte Hatherley gig in about 2004. I’m 6’0. He claims to be 5’10 and in the photo came up to the bottom of my nose.

    I think my tweet accompanying the photo said “If Simon Pegg is 5’10” that makes me about 6’9″.”

    Got sworn at. Blocked. LOL.

  18. THE Gordon Brittas tweeted me back once. It made me ridiculously happy!

    And Sir Chris Hoy

    And Sir Tom Peters…

    Come to think of it, Gordon Brittas should be knighted. For services to the leisure industry ❤️

  19. Well, my experiences with Twitter I suppose have been quite tragic. As previously mentioned on another post, Boy George blocked me from his account for criticising a photo of a bowl of soup he’d just made. Inexplicably, this did earn me a “like” from ex PIL member Keith Levene. More embarrassing (if possible) was the time when I mistakenly tweeted to a friend that Kid Congo Powers had once been the drummer in The Cramps. I was instantly contacted by a Las Vegas belly dancer who sneeringly told me to get my facts right. This set of a hideous chain of events where I was mercilessly trolled and mocked by “the Cramps/ Pink Monkey Birds community” for the best part of six months. This only stopped when Kid Congo himself stepped in and told his legion of fans to “leave the limey alone”. Don’t go on Twitter much anymore.

    • I was once, many moons ago, a member of The Cramps Community. They are a resourceful, resilient lot with bags of stamina. The Cramps gigged relentlessly and the crowd was expected to dress up and participate as much as possible (no standing at the back, arms folded, quietly observing as I tried once). We would emerge sweat-drenched, leather straps chafing, night after night after night, feeling fabulous and grateful to be alive.

      I’m not surprised they kept trolling you for so long.

  20. I’ve little idea who all these twitterati are.

    But I am seriously impressed that @RobC has “been retweeted by The Clangers”.

    They’ll be inviting him over to their planet soon for blue string pudding! I am very envious.

  21. I’ve had a couple of good responses from Ian MacMillan (a reasonably good pun) and Victoria Coren Mitchell (a really bad pun about her appearance on the Bake off which she responded to in good humour).

    Also managed to mildly offend Mark Ellen once of this parish, all solved with a quick apology. One of the problems with Twitter is if you’re not careful what you write it can come back to bite you very quickly.

    • Who?

      Some bloke from 6 Music or wherever retweeted one of my frequent posts on @BadAlbumCovers. I have no idea who he was so I won’t mention it again.

  24. Ian Connell of Burnistoun liked one of my tweets once, which was nice.
    Brian Moore, he of rugby fame, and I occasionally pass opinion back and forth. I admire the fact that when he is corrected on something, he owns up to it immediately.
    Mark Ellen and I engaged. Briefly. For he was right and I was not.
    And I was able to get Julian Dicks, after West Ham brought him back on the coaching staff, to wish my son happy birthday. He had coached my son three years earlier in a small town in North Carolina.

  25. Loads – Mike Garson thanking me for saying nice things about his playing on Aladdin Sane, Neil Innes gently chiding me for having a go at Eric Idle over The Rutles

    If the 11 year old me had known the singer of Two Tribes would thank me for praising his performance at Rewind Festival while I was watching it on the telly…..

  26. Eric Idle is generally happy and interactive on Twitter. Being able to ask him directly about certain things is part of the magic of Twitter. Similarly tweets from Elvis Costello and Neil Finn are exactly as DFB describes above: Imagine telling your teenage self that one day you’d have a direct channel to these folk.

    I’ve had tweets re-tweeted by Dara Ó Briain, and when one of your tweets hits a huge number of followers like that, you get a sense of what Twitter must be like for someone famous. Non-stop pings of interaction. I had one tweet favourited and retweeted about 400 times in 24 hours. It seemed like Twitter had come alive.

    My biggest success on Twitter was finding out directly from Questlove the name and release date of the Elvis & The Roots album about a week or two before the official announcement. That was cool.

  27. I once asked Matthew Le Tissier – my favourite non Liverpool footballer – whether he was still fond of a sausage & egg McMuffin and he replied in the affirmative.

  29. Possibly not in the same league as Twitter (ie a lot smaller audience) but Jake Burns replied to a comment, and Henry Cluney liked something I posted in a SLF Facebook group.
    I was properly pround of myself for at least 3 weeks (maybe 10 minutes is more ralistic)

  32. I still can’t get my head around Twitter but David Crosby has responded to me a few times in the past.

    On Facebook Elvis Costello ‘liked’ my post about him being kind enough to acknowledge his early days at Davidstow village hall.

    A couple of months ago Jimmy Webb started a sort of ‘ask Jimmy’ feature once a week on his f/b site……..I asked him how he felt when he hears terrible versions of his songs – I mentioned the Association version of P F Sloan – and, to my surprise, he answered it and I was his first question/answer published.

  33. I’m not very active on Twitter anymore but Mike Scott answered a question on whether David Bowie sang backing vocals on Whole Of The Moon, Tim Booth called my son a good lad and sent him his love for his telling me that I should tweet Tim Booth to tell him how much he loved their last album and Clint Boon thanked me for putting Milk & Two Sugars on my This My Jam feed.

    All of which made me very happy with them and the internet.

  34. Me and Lenny Law once got involved in a playground style “my mate fancies you” exchange with Tracie Young (The Jam / Style Council / 2House That jack Built”) which was great fun and she was a great sport. Bobby Ball sent me a “Ha Ha Dave, very funny response” after I rebuked him for a peace and love style Tweet by claiming it was a bit rich coming from someone who’d built his career on the phrase ” I pigging hate…..) Mark King and Nick Heyward are responders as is the Twitter god that is The Reverand Richard Coles………….

  35. I haven’t tweeted since 2012, I think.

    Only one famous interaction I can recall. With The Wurzels. I found a copy of their cover of ‘Sex Farm’ and tweeted it was either the funniest or most sinister cover ever made.

    They replied saying they couldn’t agree more with either sentiment.

        • I sensed a bit of a nasty edge to your response to Cat’s wholly justified call for Salman to be put to death for writing some words in a book that insulted a medieval, paedophile warlord.
          Could you not just have patronised and infantilised him or, better still, just bury your head in the sand? (Maybe not best choice of phrase)

          • The best part is how he’s been accepted back into the music world (which he totally denounced after finding Islam) and now appears in all the music magazines.

            Why, it’s almost as if it never happened.

            Recently Cat said “”People need to get over it” and put all that Rushdie nonsense behind them, presumably.

  39. I was genuinely shocked to receive an email one morning informing me that “Booker T. Jones is following you on Twitter.” He has 24.4K followers, he follows 88 people! He’s subsequently confirmed to me, that like me, he is an Arsenal supporter.

    I was somewhat less shocked to find out that I was being followed by Chris Barron. I had to Google him, and found out that he’s the lead singer of The Spin Doctors. I haven’t asked him if he’s an Arsenal supporter.

Leave a Reply