Malcolm Walker says he joined Twitter on 4 November to see what people were saying about his TV show, but plenty were curious to see what he might say when he came into Twitter contact with sworn enemy Bill Grimsey. A grudge has been simmering away between the two since 2001, when Grimsey was hired by Walker to run his beloved Iceland and, Walker believes, steered it to the brink of bankruptcy.

Seeing as Twitter beefs have become an established part of the media landscape, it was considered inevitable that a 140-character duel would erupt. It took until 25 November for Grimsey to tweet Walker directly, responding to Walker’s debut tweet, saying he “couldn’t give a damn!” Shortly after that, in response to a later tweet from a random person, which mocked Grimsey for a passage in Walker’s book that suggested he didn’t know how to use email when he joined Iceland, Grimsey tweeted that passages in Walker’s book were “untrue”.

“You can’t control what people say about you, even if it is untrue, but you can control how you respond to it!” Walker tweeted straight back: “Untrue Bill? Sue me!”, clearly relishing the idea of a high-profile courtroom battle.

Sadly for anyone else relishing the idea, it all went quiet after that - on the official Walker account anyway. But shortly after Walker joined Twitter, a Bill Grimsey hoax account, @cockneywanker2, sprung up. “Delusional ex-retailer, turnaround specialist (the Costa Concordia, that was me), self-appointed town centre messiah and would-be life peer,” reads the bio. “Nothing to do with me (honest)” tweeted Walker, as he encouraged people to follow it. And the saga continues…

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