By Tom Parsons
October 10 – One of England’s finest footballers has joined twitter, racking up 275,000 followers in the first 24 hours he was part of the social community. Fans and friends joined in welcoming the former England star to twitter, with @GazzaOfficial promising to show us “the real Gazza” on the social network.
Despite only tweeting 7 times in 24 hours, Gascoigne managed to gain 275,000 followers in that time period and was inundated with good luck messages from celebrity friends, fans and current footballers. His first tweet read “Finally on Twitter will keep everyone up to date… Looking forward to getting to know you guys and showing you the real Gazza !!” and has already had 4400 retweets.
Fans got wind of Gazza’s arrival early on Tuesday afternoon with some tweeting Gascoigne’s children asking them whether it was a real or fake account. Bianca Gascoigne, Paul’s daughter, confirmed that it was real to one fan before the account was verified by twitter a few hours later.
Some of the welcome messages from celebrities included Piers Morgan tweeting: “Welcome to the greatest British footballer of my lifetime > @gazzaofficial (show him some love…)” and former teammate Gary Lineker tweeting: “Blimey Gazza has joined twitter. I should probably have a word with him. Welcome @gazzaofficial”. Other celebrities welcoming him included Danny Baker, Robbie Fowler, Geoff Hurst and Peter Jones.
However, despite a largely positive response to Gazza’s entrance, there always going to be some negativity. A minority tweeted Gascoigne abusing him for his well documented drinking problem that he’s been battling for several years now along with some stating they were only following him for “inevitable drunk tweets”.
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