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Comic Relief is a charity that raises truly impressive sums of money for a variety of excellent causes. Each appeal is assisted by famous performers throwing themselves enthusiastically into raising funds. This year Comic Relief has had a new idea. Many celebrities have twitter accounts. They have many followers. Some of those followers might be persuaded to bid large sums of money in return for … well in turn for the celebrity following the bidder. It is being organised through ebay. One participating celebrity is John Prescott. If you place the highest bid he offers what is known as a “super-follow”. What is a superfollow? The answer is set out in the description of the item you are bidding for:

The ‘Super-Follow’ means that John will do ALL of these things…

1. Follow you on Twitter for 90 days
2. Retweet one of your tweets
3. Send out a tweet including your Twitter @username

You may immediately think this is a brilliant idea. In which case read no further and go off and bid. When you are outbid donate the money another way.

Lots of people have thought it is a terrible idea. Somewhat to my own surprise, I agree with them. Since many a pained celebrity has asked rhetorically “why the upset?” I thought I would try to explain. The problem is one of tone and, ultimately, status. Being famous confers a status on you. I have no doubt most celebrities would vigorously deny that they believe they are “worth” more than any one else. Many, perhaps most, such denials would be entirely sincere. However, the fact is that if you are consistently treated as if you have a special value or status it takes a strong conscience and personality not to start believing it.

In the UK we like our celebrities to at least feign humility. Considerable approbation is available for just doing ordinary things; “He takes the bus! They knit their own jumpers! I said hello and he said hello back! She likes cheese on toast!” Our interest and admiration confer the status and the recipients are required to keep persuading us that it has not gone to their heads.

Before the rise of the social networks the average person’s chances of having their path cross with that of a celebrity were very limited. Interaction would likely be limited to a few seconds strained conversation or an autograph request. Even those micro-bursts of contact would be used to assess a “down to earth” score: “I asked for an autograph and he mumbled something about needing to get to hospital – the bastard”. What makes twitter fascinating is that the possibility of interaction has increased dramatically. For the famous who have grasped the power of the medium it has been a great way to demonstrate to people that all the respect and regard has not gone to their head thereby, perversely, generating still more of both.

Some things don’t work. If you have your PR agency write your tweets, expect disdain. That is not “down to Earth”. If your tweets consist entirely of entreaties to buy your record or watch your programme, expect disdain. If you take the time occasionally to read what is sent to you and compose a reply, you can expect to see your follower numbers tick up at an accelerated rate. That figure, the number of followers, has a power of its own. Who wouldn’t prefer to be in a pitch meeting saying “I have a million followers on twitter – you can be sure people will be interested in the project I am pitching. The buzz will generate itself.” The simple act of engaging with followers in a suitably straightforward way turns followers into advocates and evangelists.

The twist is that despite the fact that we like celebrities to deal with us as if all were equality, there is a thrill associated with having someone with a million followers choose our message to retweet. If they decide to follow us that means that from the dizzying number of those who bombard them with half-formed thoughts they have identified us as consistently interesting enough to be worth that tiny commitment. For many on Twitter, that possibility of direct access to those they admire and the presumed (even if illusory) closing of the status gap, is part of what makes Twitter special. It is against that background that the tone of the bid for “super-follow” has to be judged. What Lord Prescott’s offering implies is:

“In the interests of charity I am prepared to put in the 20 odd seconds of effort that the ‘super-follow’ requires. For 90 days I will give the impression that you are interesting enough to follow. I will take something you have said and retweet it thereby giving the impression I thought it was interesting. Because I have many followers some of my status will be conferred on you. The same result may be expected as a result of me including your twitter handle in a message. However, none of this is genuine. It is an inconvenience to me that I am willing to undertake in the interests of helping others.”

Put another way, what it is does, in the most patronising imaginable way, is to take the very status gap that Twitter is commonly supposed to have eroded and to rub our noses in it. I don’t want someone to pretend to be interested in me for money even if charity does benefit.

Little S has recently put in a lot of thought into pondering the differences between boys and girls. She will sidle up to me and say:

“Daddy, you going weewee? You use your willy? You weewee standing up? You got willy and a bumbum? My baby [her doll] has willy and a bumbum.”

It is hard not to be disconcerted. On our flight to Aberdeen last week, she announced she needed the loo. I did too. As she washed her hands, I dropped my trousers and sat down as fast as I could. I was confident I’d got into position faster than her head had turned. The questioning started:

“You do weewee sitting down?”
“Yes”
“Why?”
“Why not?”
“You use willy?”
“Yes”
“Daddy got big willy?”
“Er … no … er not particularly”
“Daddy got small willy?”
“Er … let’s get you back to the seat.”

I opened the door and we bumped into a stewardess. Little S looked up at her:

“My Daddy got LITTLE willy”.

I know I haven’t posted much here recently. Really, it’s for your own good. I have become exactly the sort of boring parent I feared I would. I am fascinated by everything the kids do and cannot believe you won’t be too. You love my kids. You do. YOU DO. Just let me get this one blog entry off my chest and, I promise, we can move on.

One year ago today, P and I were drifting, weightless with fear, towards their foster parents’ front door. My amygdala was coughing loudly and urgently gesturing for my attention:

“Turn around sunshine and start running. Empty your bladder and void your bowels and you’ll be 0.5% faster (and much less appetising to a raptor).”

“Listen” it kept saying “You cannot make yourself love them. This will be a disaster.” The amygdala, it turns out, is well-meaning but not to be trusted when it comes to adoption and to matters of the heart. I love my girls. This is a miracle: Prosaic, quotidian but miraculous. I was the boy who didn’t believe in Love.

When Prince Charles writhed awkwardly behind the then Lady Diana Spencer at their engagement announcement and, prompted to confirm they were in love responded with, “Yes … whatever love is”, his words mirrored my thoughts. “So”, I speculated, “it seems the future monarch and I have more in common than our shared passion for punishingly uncomfortable hunting tweed underpants.” I could not conceive of Love existing in the form that everyone else on Earth appeared to credit. It all seemed believing in Father Christmas. We were conspiring, as a culture, to fool ourselves into believing in something supposedly wonderful that 5 minutes careful thought would indicate was ridiculously impossible. Love was, at best, the side effect of some hormonal surge.

When I had my first crush, I was bemused. I couldn’t work out why my head had stopped working. I was compelled to approach her and speak whatever nonsense fell from my mouth; to write letter after letter after letter. It was a measure of her great humanity that she did not simply pay to have me rolled off the side of a Scandanavian ferry and dropped into the North Sea. I cannot ever thank her enough. For an aspiring cynic, the crush was an important but terrifying realisation that a devotion to sarcasm alone was not a sufficient bulwark of identity. I could feel Love overcoming me; over-powering me. It was as if I was losing an arm-wrestling bout with an beneficent but implacable nun. I felt like HAL, losing system after system and knowing that I was one logic board away from singing “I’m half crazy, all for the love of you”.

When I fell in Love with P things were different. I felt Love seeping in to the salt marsh of my mind – an evening tide raising boats from beds and bringing life back to the pools and shallows of my brackish self. I welcomed it. “Prince Charles” I thought “you’re an idiot”. I threw away my last pair of tweed undies.

Falling in love with the girls has been different again. It feels like I’ve been tased. All higher critical faculties have gone. All is impulse now. The impulse is extravagant. I understand with a perfect clarity that the world is simply not good enough. It has to be changed. I have to change it. Now. When I get home and Little S runs to hug me I just want to stand in the doorway and cry. When Big S hands me a picture of our new family, I want to stand in the doorway and cry. Pretty much any interaction with them makes me want to head to a doorway and start weeping. My house needs more doorways.

My amygdala is back in favour. Two days ago I had taken Little S to a “mini-active class” which involves her ignoring the instructors whilst running around grinning and waving at me. I sat rapt, heart soaring. A shadow in my peripheral vision resolved to a small boy. An evil little bastard who, without provocation, threw a basketball at Little S’s head. It caught her from behind and dropped her. In comfortably under a nano-second my amygdala had a fully documented plan of action which involved my taking the small male child and drop-kicking him the length of the gym before going in search of his father with an iron bar and a gutful of homicidal rage. My frontal cortex begged me to sit still. It assured me that whilst I very plainly felt justified in taking another child’s life, others might look less charitably on my actions. I instead concentrated my anger into a look so malevolent that when I caught the offender’s eye he wept instantly. I am probably the image he sees now when he closes his eyes. I fear what I will have become by the time they reach their teens. Any boy who messes with their feelings will hear me cackle gutturally and never be seen or heard from again. My entire garden will be covered by patio.

What does all this come to? It comes to this: I know sometimes men who are considering adoption read my blog. I know they will at some point ask themselves whether they could “Love somebody else’s baby”. I just want to put my arm, metaphorically around those people, and say “of course you can you unbelievable fucking imbecile. You won’t have any choice in the matter and it is utterly wonderful”