In the annals of pseudo-holidays—Newman’s Day, Festivus, Merlinpeen—there is none, to my mind, more pleasing than April 28th, on which Britons the Internet wide observe the anniversary of the time a distracted politician accidentally tweeted his own name. (Well, except maybe Merlinpeen.) The politician in question is the Labour M.P. and Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer Edward Michael (Ed) Balls. At 4:20 P.M. on April 28, 2011, Balls was in a grocery store in Yorkshire, picking up the ingredients for his signature fourteen-hour pulled pork. Somewhere between the white buns and the watermelon, he got a call from an aide. The aide urged him to search Twitter for an article that mentioned him. Balls hit the wrong key on his Blackberry and tweeted the now immortal phrase: “Ed Balls.”

“Ed Balls”: it’s got a ring to it. By the time Balls got out of the supermarket, he had already become the Rick Astley of Westminster. Balls didn’t delete the tweet because “he did not know you could.” The original tweet has, by now, garnered more than ten thousand “favorites” and has been retweeted more than twenty-five thousand times. One of the best things about “Ed Balls” has been its unpredictable afterlife. “Ed Balls” lies dormant for a while, and then someone, for some reason, will revive it, dispatching a fresh “Ed Balls” to your timeline in the day-improving manner of a free drink or a found bill. There are Ed Balls pie graphs, Ed Balls T-shirts, Ed Balls service updates. The Mirror is covering Ed Balls Day live. Earlier this year, the Deputy Prime Minister Nick Clegg even got in on the fun, tweeting—what else?—“Ed Balls.”

Today, the festivities got started early, as Ed Balls’s countrymen tweeted about Ed Balls while waiting to see if the man himself would resurface.

Mid-morning, Ed Balls spoke, tweeting:

As of the writing of this post, none of his followers had tweeted back what seemed like the only response: “Ed Balls.”

Photograph: Andy Rain/EPA