By now we’re all aware that every shamelessly self-promoting celebrity worth their salt has a Twitter account through which to interact with their fans (and to poignantly offer their condolences to the Jackson family, of course). It’s a trend that has provided a rich seam of comedy for the showbiz pages and blogs to mine week in week out (latest news implicates Calvin Harris as having stopped following Tinchy Stryder as he can’t decipher the text speak in his tweets!).

But this week Twitter has become the banana skin on which sports stars are queuing to slip up on.  Firstly, Australian Ashes cricketer Phillip Hughes revealed through the site that he had surprisingly been cut from the latest test team; a move which apparently allowed England an advantage as they were able to reshuffle their own teamsheet accordingly. Then came a howler from Spurs’ Darren Bent, who vented his ire at the club for being difficult in his transfer negotiations with Sunderland. His exact words were “It’s so frustrating hanging round doing jack s**t. Seriously getting p***ed off now.” Charmer.

All of which has led to the question being asked of whether or not these guys should be allowed to express such thoughts in a public domain such as Twitter. At what point do you become too famous and influential to be freely allowed to say what you want on the internet without embarrassing whatever club or institution you belong to? Certainly something to debate there…

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