Britain’s gold-medal-winning swimmer Rebecca Adlington has announced that during the Olympics she will not be looking at Twitter or any other similar site because she gets upset by remarks about her appearance.

What kind of person looks at a picture of Ms Adlington and thinks, “I know what I’ll do today. I’ll go online and let the long-legged, blue-eyed, world-beating blonde know that her conk’s a bit on the large side. And then afterwards I’m going to leave a message for Uma Thurman saying she’s got thin hair”?

You may think that if this is happening there must be a lunatic on the loose. But you’d be wrong. There are, in fact, tens of thousands of lunatics out there, all of whom spend their days