Ed Balls

Ed Balls.

Really, I should stop right there. It would certainly beat the waffle out of me for a change. But on the other hand, you’re here now, so I may as well go on: Happy Ed Balls Day!

As I write this, Ed Balls’ “Ed Balls” tweet has had 90,785 retweets, while the corresponding cock-up by Eamonn Holmes (the “Portugal Girlie” affair) is peaking at 1,504.

According to the maths, this means that celebrating the erstwhile Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer’s tech fumble is some 60.36 times more amusing than watching some beige sit-on-arse breakfast clown conflate Twitter with Pornhub.

But does this make it worthy of a hashtag day? We already have so many that they’re fighting for airtime (Hedgehog Day is on Groundhog Day – who knew?). They’re also stackable, like getting a double word score in Scrabble (13 April), as seen with World Stationery Day (27 April) erupting through the middle of National Stationery Week.

Enough of this hashtaggery is just marketing flannel, but surely that’s a good thing? If there’s one thing marketing pish means, it’s flash giveaways. Of course, some may be more eagerly anticipated than others: International Coffee Day (1 October) sounds promising; International Hashtag Day (23 August) less so.

Ed Balls Day, however, is at least organic. Perhaps that’s why so few promoters are bandwagonning it today. And when I say ‘few’ I mean ‘one’.

I’m so glad we found each other, because somewhere out there are 42 grams of protein in a jiffy bag with my name on.

Ed Balls