The 100 Worst People On Twitter

@prodnose

#AuntieEstablishment

As so often happens in Britain, be it politics, war, or football punditry, it’s the grunts who take the bulk of the punishment while the commanding officers get off scot-free. Whether it’s an imperial throwback or just the nature of power, there’s no denying that it’s been one of the more sinister components of your, ehm, culture, for some time.

Tim Lovejoy is one of those grunts. Yes, we’ve all seen the When Saturday Comes book review, we’ve seen the pasta sauce adverts, and we’ve seen him turn up in every charity football match going. We’re not saying he doesn’t deserve the very worst in life, we’re just saying that he’s a common footsoldier, your standard babykiller, and at some point you’ve gotta trace this back to the source. You’ve got to go to the real god of war. You’ve got to go to Danny Baker.

Much like nu-metal, while neo-lad culture has been rightly subjected to great criticism and mockery, its original incarnation has undergone a simultaneous revisionism and been absolved of all blame, as though the simple tacking on of the ‘new’ prefix atones for all sins. You can’t sit there hating Soccer AM but think Fantasy Football was high art, but that’s apparently the view we’re supposed to take now.

It’s not just that, of course. There’s his fanboy-posing-as-drinking-pal act with Paul Gascoigne, driving him to drink and despair and ending up as one of the many “Well I bought Paul a few drinks recently and let me tell you, those hangers-on haven’t half taken him for a ride” rent-a-quotes.

If the value of artists’ work only hits its peak after their death, then radio presenters seem to hit their zeitgeist at the point at which their show is threatened.with the axe. It’s when we see the worst of Britain, the liberal do-gooderism coming out to play, half the people on this list coming out to petition for a radio show they never listen to while a fourth food bank opens up in their area, the same strain as the Riot cleanup and mass scabbing.

So it was when Baker’s show came under threat, as Twitter suddenly poured one out en masse to talk about what a great guy Danny Baker was, exactly at the moment he became the most obnoxious man on the site. No praise went unretweeted, and no petty naysayer went untagged to unleash his new fans upon. If you’d not heard of Baker before, and decided to check him out based on all this praise, you’d find a man posting hourly pleas to vote for him to win an award, as if he was running an Arsenal blog from his mum’s basement.

These, however, are recent crimes, and Baker’s past is enough to condemn him here. The next time you tire  of John Terry photoshops, Fernando Torres jokes, 'hey-remember-this-guy-he-sure-had-a-funny-haircut’ memes, and yes, Soccer AM, spare a thought for the man who started it all.

Sample Tweets

“BBC4 Tonight 8.30 - my peroration on Factories. The Independent today called it "funniest show currently on TV” but that could be a trap.“

"No seriously. Do not vote for me here. I’ve already had pompous emails from indignant BBC local radio mandarins: http://www.sonygoldenheadphones.com/vote/”

“BBCasked me not to say anything just yet about axing best show on British Radio. Why? Because it’s embarrassing? Because they’ll look bad?”