http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/terence-blacker/terence-blacker-why-do-they-all-fawn-over-saint-max-1638457.html

Satire is alive and well – on Twitter

Satire can be such a complex business that sometimes one needs a codebook to differentiate between the acceptably barbed and the merely silly. The veteran humorist John O’Farrell has haughtily rebuked a woman called Lisa Valentine for impersonating David Tennant on the Twitter social network. Satire “needs to be aimed at the powerful and pompous,” O’Farrell said.

Valentine’s joke was, in fact, an excellent one. Sending out Twitter messages under the name of THE David Tennant, she had the actor, ridiculing his Doctor Who successor, being close friends with Paul Daniels and writing a book called “David Tennant, Bigger on the Inside”.

Satire? Of course. Even when told it was a trick, Tennant’s fans twittered on. Some actually wanted Lisa Valentine’s autograph; being an impersonator had made her semi-famous herself. O’Farrell is quite wrong. This excellent Twitter joke (possibly the only Twitter joke) is not at the expense of Tennant but of his celebrity-struck fans – and of powerful, pompous satirists.

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bloody brilliant