In a deliciously meaty twist to the story of gagged evolutionary psychology visiting fellow Nikolas Lloyd, the thread on a vegetarian dating site, where offended steak-dodgers plotted his silencing at the hands of Newcastle University, has itself been removed by site techs.

It was removed on Friday after the site was bombarded by enraged meat lovers. The Reg's letters bag on Friday attested that many veggies were ashamed of their po-faced brethren too.

Veggieromance.com administrators said too many people were registering on the site simply to post abuse. Lloyd's defenders aimed their wrath at originators of moves to mob Newcastle webmasters with complaints about a light-hearted anti-veggie diatribe posted on his university-served webpage.

The free IT service, sponsored by academics in the Department of Psychology, was a lifeline for Lloyd to pursue respected work in evolutionary psychology. As well as tearing down his web page, Newcastle deleted Lloyd's email account. ®