I have made it clear in the past that I abhor Twitter. (The Hooting Yard Twitter feed, adverted to over in the right-hand column, consists of nought but pointers to postages on this site, generated by some sort of het internet robot, so I need never go near it with a bargepole.)

One reason to loathe Twitter is of course the enthusiasm with which it was embraced by The Most Gigantic Brain In The Known Universe, of whom Peter Hitchens has observed “Stephen Fry’s voice and manner generally make me switch off the radio – that strange mixture of hair oil and molasses, bubbling with self-satisfied giggles, is more than I can take at any time of day”. Hitchens may be bonkers, but in this case he is surely correct.

Anyway, I mention Twitter only because I came across an eerily prescient observation, in The Tents Of Wickedness by Peter De Vries, published in 1959:

“And have you noticed something else about figures with the tragic sense? They’re the ones who buck the race up. Not the twitterers.”