REGULAR readers of my weekly column will be well aware of my unerring ability to alienate people in pretty much any situation.

I like regular readers – they are great. I also like irregular readers – they are nearly as great, but would be greater if they were regular readers.

My favourite readers, though, are the ones who read my column online and retweet it when I publicise it on Twitter. They are the best. When I am king of the universe, they will all get galaxies of their own.

Like the well brought-up chap I am not, I try to thank everybody who RTs my column on Twitter. I used to be able to do this by looking at my bit.ly results and working my way through them. I often get around 100 RTs, for which I am very grateful. Obviously it takes a bit of time to thank 100 people, but, like I say, I am very grateful.

Now bit.ly has stopped providing this service, at around the same time as Twitter brought in its Activity and @Gary_Bainbridge tabs. I presume you don’t have an @Gary_Bainbridge tab. That is probably specific to me.

So now, unless I spend every second monitoring Twitter – and, despite all evidence to the contrary, I do not – sometimes I do not find out that somebody has pimped my column. So I don’t know to thank him or her. And if this is somebody who I normally thank, i.e. anybody at all who pimps my column, then I am worried that he or she will think that I have become all lah-de-dah and up myself.

I am not all lah-de-dah. I admit to being up myself. Nevertheless, if you did pimp me this week, and did not receive my thanks, please accept my thanks. And my assurance that I am mortified.