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Twitter Lord Mcalpine Alan Davies

10,000 could face legal action following Lord McAlpine tweets

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By Ishbel Macleod, PR and social media consultant

November 19, 2012 | 2 min read

Alan Davies, star of Jonathan Creek and QI, could be one of 10,000 facing legal action after he asked his Twitter followers "Any clues as to who the Tory paedophile is?", and retweeted a response mentioning Lord McAlpine.

Experts are reported to have already found 1,000 "original" tweets and a further 9,000 retweets mentioning the former Conservative Party treasurer: the largest number of defendants in British legal history.

While Davies has not made any comment, a source told the Telegraph that Davies didn’t realise the tweet, which contained a link to an article, mentioned McAlpine at the end.

The retweet was then retweeted a further 12 times by fans and favourited six times.

A Sky reporter had also replied to the enquiry by Davies, suggesting a ‘Simple google search does it’.

It has been said that so far, 40 people have apologised, including Guardian columnist George Monbiot.

The Telegraph reports that people could have to pay as little as £5 each, with the money to go to a children’s charity, although higher profile names would be expected to pay more.

Sally Bercow is amongst others being pursued, and sent several tweets when this was discovered, including saying ‘gulp’ and ‘hey ho’. It has been suggested that McAlpine's lawyers could be seeking a larger amount from Bercow.

Twitter Lord Mcalpine Alan Davies

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