Fittingly, these Twitter Glitter fireworks come with a clear warning.

It has been all over Twitter for the last couple of days that convicted paedophile, Gary Glitter, had supposedly set up his own Twitter account and was tweeting away to thousands of fans. Apparently, this was to support a forthcoming album, tour and autobiography.

Naturally, this caused uproar amongst the Twitter community, and his name was soon a trending topic. There were a mixture of responses; some of disgust, some expressing forgiveness, some excited about the prospect of a comeback and of course, thousands upon thousands of jokes directed at the disgraced glam rock star.

We very much doubt that the vast majority of those jokes were in any way making light of the unspeakable crimes committed by Glitter, but a way of voicing opinions in a very ‘social media kind of way’. Besides, however wrong you may think it is to crack jokes about serious issues, there’s absolutely no getting away from them in this day and age.

One response that caught our eye in particular, came from comedian Peter Serafinowicz. Here’s what he tweeted directly to @OfficialGlitter:

Serafinowicz had suspected that it was a fake account, but couldn’t resist posting his gibe at Glitter.

Anyway, it has since been revealed that the account was in fact a fake, and the creator, who goes by the name of Ben, claims that it was all just a social media experiment. Late last night, the account’s 15,000 followers were directed to a tumblr. page for a full explanation of the hoax. The page no longer exists, but here’s a brief quote:

‘I set this Twitter account up as a social experiment to highlight the dangers and safety of children using the social networking sites and to discover and question public morality.’

At present, unlike Facebook and various other social media sites, Twitter doesn’t have restrictions in place to prohibit sex offenders from opening accounts. Perhaps this is the issue that ‘Ben’ wanted to raise, but did he go about it in the right way? Well, he certainly made his voice heard.

At least we can rest assured that, for now, there won’t be a new album, tour or a book.

On hearing the news about the account being a fake, here’s what Wynne Evans, the infinitely annoying opera singer from the GoCompare adverts, had to say:

So what’s your view on the whole matter? Was it a legitimate social experiment or nothing short of a tasteless joke? We’ll leave that for you to decide.