Spectral Spector Twitterer admits hoax

The highly entertaining Twitter account purporting to be from Phil Spector has been revealed by its unidentified owner to be one of those naughty internet hoaxes.

The anonymous - and really rather amusing - author revealed the jape with a tweet at 1pm GMT, confessing "I am NOT Phil SPector. I made this account as a joke. Befriending a cockroach? c'mon folks... even Phil's not that crazy."

Well, we'd buy it, frankly - indeed the Reg took out a few credulity payments on it yesterday. Let the record show, however, that while we voiced a small note of scepticism (and confined ourselves to Bootnotes, the newspaper at the bottom of the vulture's cage), the greater portion of the face-egg must go to the Telegraph and indie news bastion NME.com among others who offered no such flimsy arse-coverage in their reports.

'Phil' went on to thank his followers and say that the whole thing had been meant as "a giggle", but also to point out, quite reasonably, that there is a lesson here:

Twitter you need to start doing something to combat fake accounts. If I was a malicious person I could have caused damage.

Twitter has proved a fertile ground indeed for the often carefully crafted fake profile. An eerily convincing Jade Goody feed ran for some days after it was reported that her cancer was terminal. Peep Show actor David Mitchell was obliged to clear up some confusion after an account was run in his name, and The Thick Of It writer Armando Ianucci found himself having to join when the same happened to him.

'Phil' finally signed off with:

Have a great day all and I hope I managed to raise a smile for some people. Life's too short for depressing news all the time. Bye from me..

This is my final final final tweet as Phil. Apologies if I caused any offence to anyone at any time. It was never intended. Bye everyone.

But, true to the Twitter ethos, he was still exchanging cheery tweets with followers at time of publication. See - you really can't believe everything you read on the internet... ®