There was scarcely a word of this that hadn’t made him want to rip his eyeballs from their sockets, but @TruthIsASword seemed to have hit pay dirt because his/her/its reply had been liked or retweeted more than one hundred thousand times over the subsequent twenty-four hours and it seemed as if everyone wanted a piece of him now. Who was this @TruthIsASword anyway? A man? A woman? A gerbil? There was no photograph, just some stock image of the word Peace with no biographical profile, other than ‘The truth is even sharper than a sharpened blade’, which to his mind seemed both tautological and absurd.

As the day had worn on, the number of messages coming his way had made his phone threaten to burst into flames, like a Galaxy Note 7 on a long-haul flight. His agent, Denise, inundated with messages on her own social media accounts, had called to suggest that he offer an apology, but he’d refused, asking why he should have to apologize for something that was done with the best of intentions.

‘Because these things are like snowballs,’ said Denise. ‘They have a habit of snowballing.’

‘Your linguistic logic never fails to impress me,’ he replied, wondering whether such pearls of wisdom really deserved ten per cent of his annual income.

‘Just admit that you did wrong, it’s a lot easier that way. People will accept it and move on.’

‘But I didn’t do wrong,’ he protested. ‘Does that count for nothing?’

‘Not really, no.’

‘So, if I was on trial for murder, but I’d happened to be away photographing penguins in the Arctic at the time the crime was committed, you’d say that I should plead guilty and go down for life because “it’s a lot easier that way”?’

‘I would in that instance, yes, because penguins live exclusively in the southern hemisphere, not the northern, so you’d be quickly caught out.’

‘But you take my point. Why should I apologize for something that only someone looking to be insulted would find offensive? If anything, they should be apologizing to me for taking a message of support and turning it into something more sinister.’

‘They being?’

‘The Wokesters.’

‘Who are they? Are they a family?’

‘The Wokesters,’ he repeated. ‘You know, the POOTs.’

‘The POOTs? I honestly don’t know what—’

‘The Permanently Outraged of Twitter. Look, I’ve been in this game a long time and I guarantee you that this will end up being nothing more than a storm in a teacup. It’ll all be forgotten by tomorrow and someone else will be hauled over the coals for doing something just as offensive to public sensibilities.’

‘George, if I may say—’

‘You may not,’ he replied, hanging up.