Twitter (Part 1)

Iā€™m following Wayne Rooney.
He got a hair transplant over the weekend. He even sent me a picture of it.

Lily Allen may be a multi-million selling artist turned clothing designer, but she still chose to fly Ryanair on her trip to Dublin this weekend.

However, it might have been her last trip with the airline, as the singer was left seething after she had to fork out Ā£40 to have her boarding pass printed before taking her flight to Dublin.

She ranted on Twitter: ā€œRyan Air have just charged me 40 quid to print out my boarding pass. Unbelievable.ā€ Shortly after she followed with another tweet: ā€œOh, and now theyā€™ve taken it off of me. 40 pounds for a piece of paper that was mine for approx. 7 mins, wowā€¦ā€

The singer was in Dublin on Saturday to launch her designer collection Lucy in Disguise in Brown Thomas with her sister Sarah Owen. The clothing collection is based on vintage dresses from the 1950s, 1960s and 1970s that the sisters collected to sell in their London store of the same name.

It was the subject of a Channel 4 documentary ā€˜Lily Allen From Riches to Ragsā€™, that followed the singer while she launched the shop, shown earlier this year.

Allen, who is on time out her music career, is due to marry her builder boyfriend Sam Cooper at their Gloucestershire home this Saturday June 11. It is believed Chanel designer Karl Lagerfeld has made her gown for the wedding.

  • Independent.ie reporters

Read more: http://www.independent.ie/lifestyle/independent-woman/celebrity-news-gossip/lily-allen-ryanair-rant-on-twitter-2667683.html#ixzz1OZouLxks

There are so many things wrong about this I donā€™t know where to start.
Lily you thick cunt print out your boarding pass like everyone else.

The big sam came out with a few classics last nightā€¦

Eating a big, melty Ripple by a roaring fire is one of the sexiest things a refined man can do on his own, turns me on something shocking.

I have to be careful though. The whole procedure is so sumptuous Iā€™m oftin tempted to just shove the fucking thing right up my toffee tube

WHU knew about my sexual side when they hired me. As I said to Karen Brady during my negotiations ā€œKaren, Iā€™m a right filthy cunt at timesā€

Her response on the phone convinced me I was moving to the right club. ā€œsam, she purred. ā€œIā€™m fingering myself right now. Youā€™ll do for usā€

:lol:

Fuck Lily Allen. Sounds like a right twat.

Sadly Iā€™m very close to unfollowing Paul McGrath, I love the guy but heā€™s far too liberal in giving in to retweet requests.

Iā€™m following Rio until the start of the season, he says heā€™ll be keeping us updated on his training regime over his holidays and Iā€™d like to try some of what he does.

The Big Sam has jumped the shark IMHO, he should have retired after he was banned.

Great argument going on between Oliver Holt and Rio Ferdinand this evening with Holt revaeling the content of abusive private messages sent by Rio to him.

Rio then tried to get Henry Winter on his side but Holt exposed Winter for talking out of both sides of his mouth.

Nice to see a journalist speaking his mind and not afraid to upset a footballer.

Whatā€™s the origin of this dispute / argument? I read something earlier about the two of them having a slanging match in the media mixed zone in Wembley after the England game on Saturday. Who has the hump with who and why?

Apparently Oliver Holt is Emily Bishopā€™s son

Something to do with Holt having a go at Rio over the missed drug test. I donā€™t know the full backstory yet. Rio is not happy about it.

Heā€™s right to have a go at him, Ferdinand got off far too lightly with the English media for that drugs test, didnā€™t cover himself in glory either when he went looking for a pay rise shortly after missing 9 months.

Holtā€™s column in The Mirror about how the twitter set to spilled over to Wembley:

How Rioā€™s furious foul-mouthed rant at me shows he STILL doesnā€™t get point about missing drugs tests

By Oliver Holt

I returned from Ā­holiday on Friday night, went upstairs and turned on my computer.

I looked at my Twitter feed. There was a Direct Message from Rio Ferdinand, the kind his million or so followers canā€™t see.

ā€œYou fat prick,ā€ it began.

I made a mental note to call Kolo Toure and ask for a tub of his wifeā€™s diet pills.

Then I read on.

ā€œU got something to say about me missing a drugs test say it when u see me,ā€ Ferdinand had written. ā€œYou have had many opportunities but said nothing.ā€

Many opportunities? Thatā€™s about as funny as saying Rio had many opportunities to tackle Lionel Messi in the Champions League Final.

Anyway, the next day, after the England-Switzerland game at Wembley, I said it when I saw him.

It wasnā€™t easy. He didnā€™t stop when he moved through the Mixed Zone where journalists wait behind barriers for players.

Maybe he was still trying to chase the cross heā€™d let float over his head for the first Swiss goal.

Darren Bent had missed a sitter but he was fronting up to the press. So were John Terry, Jack Wilshere, Ashley Young and James Milner.

But Rio was in a sulk, marching through, looking for the exit. I was standing next to it so it was hard for him to avoid me.

He was up for a row, no question. He strode over, all mean and moody.

Having ducked a confrontation with Fabio Capello over being deposed as England skipper, he was due a ruck with someone.

He was angry. In fact, he was outraged. He was even indignant.

He was appalled, he said, because his name had been brought into a Twitter debate about Toure getting a six month ban for snacking on Mrs Toureā€™s slimming tablets.

Manchester United fans on the site said Toureā€™s ban was pathetic. He would serve some of it in the summer, sunning himself on a beach. They were right about that.

But they also pointed out that Rio got eight months just for missing a drugs test in September 2003. They said this was not fair.

My crime was to point out that, actually, it was totally fair. Missing a test is as bad as testing positive. It has to be.

I had also pointed out that no-one, except Rio, will ever know whether he had something to hide. So we went over all of it again in the Mixed Zone. And Rio grew more and more apoplectic.

He seemed most angry of all because the subject had been aired on Twitter, which was puzzling.

The facts were all in the public domain anyway. I had written everything I wrote on Twitter many times before in The Mirror.

But it became clear as he raved that Ferdinand sees discussing those kinds of things on Twitter as off limits.

Many of his tweets are either plugs for his magazine, restaurant or official app on Android. Or inanities that end with the hashtag #oooff or #aaviit.

ā€œYou canā€™t put stuff like that on Twitter,ā€ he said, as a small crowd began to gather round in the Mixed Zone.

I said I was just joining in a debate. I thought that was the point of Twitter. Thatā€™s why I donā€™t do Direct Messages.

ā€œYou have to rise above it,ā€ he said, scolding. Then, he jabbed his finger into his chest. ā€œThatā€™s what we do,ā€ he said.

He said that like he was standing on a castle rampart somewhere with his fellow officers, looking down at his army of Twitter followers on the plain below.

Then things got more bizarre.

Rioā€™s righteous indignation kicked in. Big time.

Heā€™d had a hair follicle test some time after he missed the test at the United training ground in 2003, he said, and it had proved he hadnā€™t been taking drugs.

ā€œIsnā€™t that good enough for you?ā€ he said, as if I was some particularly cruel and unreasonable inquisitor.

Somebody from the FA arrived at this point and tried to soothe him. Rio wasnā€™t having it.

ā€œIsnā€™t that good enough for you?ā€ he said again. Slightly more urgently this time. Itā€™s truly astonishing that after all this time, he still doesnā€™t get it. Heā€™s a bright bloke, too, so actually, itā€™s more than astonishing.

Itā€™s worrying.

Put together with Toureā€™s ignorance, it suggests football and footballers are still living in a state of wilful denial about drug testing.

So I told Ferdinand it wasnā€™t good enough for me because it wasnā€™t good enough for the anti-doping authorities that administer drugs tests for athletes in this country.

If you miss a test, itā€™s no good offering to go a couple of hours later because if you have something to hide in your system, you could have hidden it by then.

You could have flushed it out, catheterised yourself to remove suspect urine from your bladder.

Or drunk so much water that it would render any test invalid.

And the hair follicle test? Sorry, but thatā€™s an irrelevance, too.

I double-checked that with Michael Stow, the head of Science and Medicine at UK Anti-Doping, yesterday just to be sure.

A hair follicle test would have proved that Ferdinand wasnā€™t taking cocaine, for example, and would have ruled out many other recreational drugs.

But it would not have tested for Human Growth Hormone or for the blood booster Erythropoietin(EPO). Or for other substances on the Prohibited List.

None of this is anything personal against Ferdinand. Itā€™s not about him.

Itā€™s about a wider Ā­principle.

He can call me fat, hippy, Mancunian, whiney, dumb, ugly, spotty or whatever he wants. It isnā€™t going to make the slightest difference.

At a time when the revered cyclist Lance Armstrong is being investigated by a federal grand jury in the US, when much of sport is under siege from drugs, itā€™s about trying to hold back the tide.

For what itā€™s worth, my instinct tells me that Ferdinand probably didnā€™t have anything to hide when he missed his test eight years ago.

But Iā€™ll never know for sure if Iā€™m right.

I told him that, too.

ā€œYouā€™re a cock,ā€ he said.

Then security stepped between us.

Yer man may be a cunt, i donā€™t know any writers for these scum mags, but he certainly has Roi wound up to the last and has won this battle by a mile.

Cant say Iā€™ve ever thought much of Holt, but heā€™s spot on there.

Rio needs lessons from Kev in the Art of Internet Warfare.
Rattled stage 4 from Rio there.

Also Kudos to Holt on the use of the word ā€œapoplecticā€

Who should I be following for the latest transfer news and gossip?

MBB. He has sources.

Does anybody else think Holt is being a bit of a cock here? It pretty much goes beyond saying that Rio is being a bit of a cock, but thatā€™s pretty much par for the course anyway. I wouldnā€™t be a huge fan of someone publishing a private correspondence, even if it was of the stupid and abusive nature. And was there really a need for the references to Messi and the ball floating over his head and ā€˜ducking a confrontationā€™ with Capello? It just all seems so childish and doesnā€™t really reflect well on anyone. As an aside, Iā€™m sure heā€™d be having a pop at him if he did have a confrontation with Capello too for disrupting morale or something.

Not at all! Itā€™s great to see a journalist being honest and calling players out on their performances.

A couple of recent cautionary tales on the danger of Twitter.

  1. US Congressman Anthony Weiner (possibly the most appropriate name for any politician invovled in any scandal in history) has admitted to sending sexually explicit pictures of himself to some of his young female followers on Twitter over a period of a few years. He got rumbled when he accidentally posted one publicly. He claimed his account had been hacked at first, but eventually admitted to it all. His political future lies in the balance, and his ambitions of becoming Mayor of New York look dead.

  2. President of the Summer Bay Life Saving Club John Palmer started tweeting to taunt his rivals from Mangrove River in the run up to the recent Surf Carnival. This led to tension being cranked up, ultimately leading to a bit of a riot involving the River Boys following the Carnival, with Sergeant Charlie Buckton being hit in the head by a flying brick.

Iā€™m pretty sure he could do that without publishing a private message and making childish jibes though.

http://a.yfrog.com/img620/7797/hzeof.jpg

http://twitter.com/#!/BandageTFK