A bookshop owner has been tweeting every line of the first Harry Potter book to Piers Morgan as a response to the journalist's Twitter spat with JK Rowling.

Simon Key, who has already sent about 100 tweets of a planned 32,567 to Morgan, told Sky News he was prompted by Morgan saying he would "never" read her book.

The row had flared up after Rowling and Morgan took shots at each other on the social media site over Donald Trump's travel ban.

On a US TV show, Morgan argued the executive order was not a "Muslim ban".

The temporary ban, which has been overturned in the US courts for now, has affected people from seven mainly-Muslim countries.


During a discussion on US talk show Real Time with Bill Maher on Friday, the British TV presenter faced off against Australian comic Jim Jefferies, who directed an expletive at him.

Rowling then tweeted that it was "satisfying" to hear Jefferies say that.

.@piersmorgan If only you'd read Harry Potter, you'd know the downside of sucking up to the biggest bully in school is getting burned alive. — J.K. Rowling (@jk_rowling) February 11, 2017

Morgan insisted that he was attempting to call out the "hysteria" around the Trump travel ban.

He later tweeted: "When all the hysterical anti-Trump liberals stop screaming, everyone will realise everything I said on @RealTimers last night was true."

Over the weekend, Morgan called Rowling's work "drivel" and she called him "amoral".

Mr Key also told Sky News more about his tweets to Morgan.

The first message was the very first line of the book: "Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much."

.@piersmorgan Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four, Privet Drive, were proud to say

that they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. — Big Green Bookshop (@Biggreenbooks) February 11, 2017

Mr Key said: "I'm doing it because Piers clearly spends all day on Twitter staring at his timeline.

"He clearly needs a bit of a break from all the abuse, so as he mentioned that he hasn't read any JK Rowling, rather then having to tear himself away from Twitter to read it, I'd tweet him.

"Obviously I'm sending it in bitesize chunks, which hopefully he'll be able to cope with, rather than giving him the daunting process of reading a whole book."