Thousands of annoyed Twitter users are engaging in an online ‘protest’ in support of a man who was arrested and fined for posting a joke tweet after his flight was delayed.
Accountant Paul Chambers (27) was found guilty in May and convicted of sending a menacing electronic communication when he tweeted: “C**p! Robin Hood Airport is closed. You've got a week and a bit to get your s*** together. Otherwise I'm blowing the airport sky high!!”
The events have been immortalised under the ‘Twitter joke trial’ hashtag – a means of tagging and tracking a topic of interest – on the micro-blogging website.
Creating a new hashtag today, users are re-tweeting Mr Chambers’s original joke about blowing up the airport, but adding the tag #IamSpartacus.
The phrase refers to a scene in the 1960 blockbuster film Spartacus starring Kirk Douglas, where the eponymous hero's fellow slaves are asked to identify him in exchange for leniency. Instead, they stand up in turn to declare: 'I am Spartacus' in order to show solidarity and share his fate.
Those who have tweeted in support of Mr Chambers include Irish comedian Dara Ó Briain and Father Ted writer Graham Linehan.
While most supporters simply chose to retweet the convicted man’s original joke, some put an amusing spin on it.
From the DrSamuelJohnson Twitter account came: “Ordure! Robin Hood's Port is clos'd! Seven Days hence I shall run you through with a PIKESTAFF!”
In a reference to the opening stoning scene Monty Python's Life of Brian, the user FurryMania tweeted: "...and all I said to my wife was "that piece of Halibut was good enough for JEHOVAH!"
Resurrecting an internet meme almost a decade old, which was based on a bad Japanese translation in a computer game, Dara Ó Briain tweeted: “Robin Hood! All your base are belong to us! Somebody set up us the Bomb!”
And Nichegirls tweeted: “Something something airport something something s**t together something something blowing it sky high #iamspartacus.”
One wag set up an account under the handle ‘RHAirport’ and from it tweeted: “C**p! I am closed. I have a week to sort my s**t out or lots of people will blow me sky high.”
Under his own Twitter handle pauljchambers today. Mr Chambers wrote: “While I cannot believe this whole #iamspartacus thing, my dad texting me ‘Btw [by the way], iamspartacus as well’ may be the coolest thing ever.”
Mr Chambers was angered at the temporary closure of the airport in northern England in January. He had planned to travel to Belfast to meet a friend with whom he had been corresponding via Twitter. Before he sent the publicly viewable joke tweet, he had sent his friend a private Twitter message making a joke about “hijacking a plane”.
It backfired spectacularly, and a week later he was arrested under the Terrorism Act and questioned by police who claimed the public tweet was a security threat. He was suspended from work and says he later left his job “due to the circumstances”. He says he has also been banned from Robin Hood airport for life.
Rejecting Mr Chambers’s appeal yesterday, Judge Jacqueline Davies read out the tweet and said she agreed with the original ruling that it contained menace. The court also ordered him to pay a further £2,000 for the appeal proceedings.
Writing in the Guardian newspaper following his original conviction, Mr Chambers said he remained "terrified" of speaking his mind and that his life had "potentially been ruined". But he praised the "outpouring" of support on Twitter, from which came many offers of help towards his costs. Actor Stephen Fry has offered to pay Mr Chambers's fine.
The story of Mr Chambers's arrest over the Twitter joke was first broken by Irish journalist Jason Walsh and Mark Hughes in the London Independent.
The hashtag #IAmSpartacus was the number one trending topic on Twitter in the UK today, with #twitterjoketrial running second.
Civil liberties campaigners have condemned the court ruling.
Additional reporting: AP