Letter from the editor: Try to be interesting

Typical. The minute I log on to Twitter, there’s a story that people are going to have their houses raided and their goods sequestered, and then thrown in jail just for an absent-minded tweet that accidentally named a footballer who couldn’t keep his trousers on, and who everyone knows anyway.

The relatively few tweets for which I have been responsible have been innocuous enough - notably suggesting that David Cameron may have been motivated by spite in rubbishing Gordon Brown for the IMF job, wondering whether Alan Sugar is the only peer on Twitter (or just the only one to use his title), and bemoaning the iniquity of a heart-breaking golf defeat.

I now have more than 1500 followers (still room on top for a few more) and have not, as yet, strayed into the sort of territory that would see me clapped in irons before you can say Jack Robinson (oh no, don’t say he’s got a superinjunction!).

I have followed the advice that my tweeting tutor, Jack, gave me from the start: namely don’t tweet under the influence - it is striking how much more direct some people’s tweets are after, say, 10pm - and don’t send any direct messages - you may confuse them with tweets that everyone can see. Oh, and try to be interesting.

It’s the final piece of advice that I’m struggling with, as 1500 people can now attest, but I can say that I’ve been touched by the welcome I’ve had from i readers, who have now found an even more instant method of getting their point across. And on that subject, I had a couple of tweets and a few texts from readers objecting to our referring to a “sausage dog” in a matrix brief on Friday about Bailey, who is the subject of a custody battle. “What’s wrong with dachshund?” asks Jo Eaton. To which I answer, nothing at all. As the proud, maybe even besotted, owner of a dachshund (standard, long-haired, since you ask), I am as upset as you are by the childish nomenclature. The perpetrator has been sent to his basket, with no biscuits. Woof woof!