Ed Balls Day: How former Shadow Chancellor Ed Balls became Twitter's favourite politician

Ed Balls
Ed Balls Credit: CRAIG BROUGH

Happy Ed Ball's Day!

April 28th is the day we celebrate the anniversary of that time Ed Balls, former MP for Morley and Outwood, accidentally tweeted out his own name on Twitter.

The origins of Ed Balls Day

It was a Thursday, much like any other Thursday - Thursday 28 April 2011, to be precise. Ed Balls, then Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer, was browsing the aisles in the Castleford branch of Asda when an aide suggested he search for an article on Twitter which mentioned him.

He began typing in his name into the 'compose tweet' field instead of the search box. An easy mistake to make, but one that would have huge (ish) ramifications.

Mr Balls became distracted by a phone call, and accidentally hit 'send' on his Blackberry, thus tweeting his own name out into the ether.

As you can see, the original tweet has since been retweeted more than 97,000 times and received more than 67,000 likes.

Why are we still talking about this?

Because Twitter loves a stupid joke. 

A high-profile individual accidentally tweeting out his own name is hardly the most rib-ticklingly hilarious event ever to occur. 

The joy of Ed Balls Days comes from the intense scrutiny that's subsequently been given to this extremely minor incident, elevating it into something rather grand and unifying. It's a joke that anyone with a Twitter account can get involved with.

The first time Mr Balls tweeted out his name it went viral, with hundreds of people retweeting it, making '"Ed Balls" the top trending topic in the UK.

Then the next year, some bright spark decided to celebrate the anniversary of this very silly trending topic - and that's continued to happen every year since

When you explain a joke doesn't that immediately kill it, rendering it entirely unfunny?

Ed Balls.

Just repeating something endlessly isn't funny, it's childish and stupid

Many people would beg to differ.

I suppose brands have been getting involved

Of course they have

More notable additions to the Ed Balls Day hilarity canon 

This tool will Ed Balls-ify whichever web page you happen to be on. Just drag the link into your bookmarks bar, click on any website and enjoy the Ed Balls effect.

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