Twitter mischief targets Bannatyne

Ross Noble fans have swamped Dragon’s Den millionaire Duncan Bannatyne with daft business ideas via the Twitter website.

The campaign was the latest in Noble’s ‘Twitterbombard Tuesdays’ which have previously targeted Doritos and the government’s Twitter tsar, Kerry McCarthy.

However, the grumpy Scottish entrepreneur didn’t enter into the spirit of the prank in the same way as Noble’s previous ‘victims’.

Ater one Twitterer, Edza95, suggested: ‘Dear Mr Dragon, I think people should get free pie every time they go into one of those big-company buildings can you help?’, Bannatyne tweeted back: ‘Are you serious?’

And he ignored other suggestsions such as Jackson Four finger puppets, a butter stick ‘like a Pritt stick but with butter’ and a request for ‘£20million to genetically modify trees to make them mini, therefore easier to climb’.

Even Soccer AM presenter Tim Lovejoy got in on the joke, suggesting: ‘I’ve invented the £3 coin. We make a million of them and sell them to the bank for £2million. They make a £1million, we make £2million.’

Every Tuesday, Noble tells his 33,200 followers to bombard a famous Twitter user, with the instructions: ‘Be nice. No meanness. Be funny.’

The comic said: ‘Bannatyne made his money in ice-cream, then gyms – talk about creating a market. What next? Flamethrowers and hosepipes?’

Noble is just back from Afghanistan, where he performed for the troops – and delivered several boxes of the Doritos he was sent following his earlier Twitterbombard Tuesday prank.

Of the trip, the 33-year-old said: ‘I think it was a spelling mistake and they thought Ross Kemp was coming.

I think I might have met the hardest bloke ever. He was shot, had the bullet removed then, still high on morphine, came and watched the show.’

Published: 30 Dec 2009