I’m going to start this blog with a disclaimer. I have never (knowingly) heard any of Justin Bieber’s music and up until yesterday I had never been on his Twitter page.

Anyhow, I was having my usual Saturday root about on Twitter, looking for football stories, seeing what is ‘trending’ and of course, coarsely attempting to punt (give away) my music to the masses via t’interweb (naturally)! Usually, Mr Bieber is trending in the US and worldwide, you can see that on the ‘trending’ list next to all the other pertinent info and useless gossip of the day!

So, I decided I was going to come up with a brilliantly ‘funny and clever’ idea of tweeting something along the lines of ‘…Would everyone stop mentioning @JustinBieber as he is always bloody trending on my bloody Twitter feed………….AH, DOH…’!

Now, I thought this might be quite amusing (in my own little sad way), albeit, probably too long for your standard Tweet (answers on a e-postcard) and quite likely to cause me to be the subject of serious online abuse from the more fervent of his ‘Beliebers’. I have no idea, how I know this term (Beliebers) and unfortunately I can’t use my 6 week old daughter as an excuse either.
Actually, light dawns on Doonie Point…….. we give a little bit of light hearted abuse to the wife’s young cousin Cameron, who is in the incredibly fortuitous position of being an 18 year old Justin Bieber ‘lookylike’, so much so, he was actually mobbed on a school trip to Peru by the locals who thought he was that very song and dance man!!! Cash those chips in son, cash those chips in!

Anyway, I decided to go and look at his page and see what his ‘digits’ are and more importantly to see if this guy actually ‘tweets’ his own crap or if it’s all corporate pish being fed to the wee lassies around the globe.

So, I’m pleasantly surprised to see that young Beaver actually does tweet and he supports the Lakers, good man, so do I……………..I then clock the amount of people that follow him or the amount of ‘followers’ he has! IN THE NAME OF WORLD DOMINATION!!! This guy has nearly 22 Million people follow him on Twitter, read again, yes……22 MILLION. Infact, at the time of looking he had 21,984,452 people actually following and hundreds of thousand of re-tweets to his various ‘Go Lakers’ and various other blah, blah, blah tweets!!

Let’s put this into perspective. If Justin Beiber’s Twitter followers were actually a Country, they’d be the 52nd most populated Country in the world between Australia and Syria, I can’t help wonder if there might be some kind of significance to these Countries, however allow me to soldier on. Oor wee Justin has 0.53% of the World’s population at his very mercy with one mere tweet……….‘…hey guys I love you, buy my new single…’, BOOM, 0.53% of the Worlds population have been instantly spoken to in the space of a few seconds and a few pressed buttons on his gold plated iPhone!

As a relatively newcomer to the ways of the tweet and as a shit kicking, grass roots, 35 year old folk singer who is happily married with one beautiful child, naturally, I have a fairly paltry looking 202 followers. So, if we compare my ‘digits’ in the same way we compared Bieber Vs The World, I am competing with………. The Isle of Jura, which is described as ‘one of Scotland’s last wildernesses’. A little over 200 people are outnumbered by 5000 deer on this stunning wee Scottish island.
Now, this, I wouldn’t change for the world………. not one bit, but maybe, just maybe…….. if Justin were to tweet “…Hey guys, check out my new Skatch Homie fae Stoney. Colon Klyne’s new dope cut, Stonehaven Radio Station and Me, drops today man, buy it here, most amazing song I’ve ever heard about Aberdeen Football Club, the way he rhymes Park with Billy Stark is frikkin siiiick dude…” …………………………………………………..STOP!

Naturally, you’re probably thinking that Justin would have run out of space by now, and yes, he quite probably would have run out of characters if he was indeed wielding your standard twitter account, but no no no, not my main man Beiber, he’ll have one of these wee extended tweet things so he can actually tweet the whole bloody message including lyrics, where to buy it, my website, my ‘digits’ and possibly an obligatory showbiz apology for quite clearly getting my name wrong, citing either exhaustion or non inhalation as the reason, he better give his homie Snoop a call!

Upon refreshing his page; which took all of about 30 seconds, due to my current location being on a boat (working for the man), where we have a slower than Dave ‘Donkey’ McPherson running in a vat of treacle Internet service (sat link), it became apparent that another 200 twitterer’s had succumbed to Young Beiber’s prose like charms, which infact doesn’t sound like a lot. However, he accumulated more new followers in 30 seconds than I have in 35 years, quite bloody impressive I’d say!

So, how about you help an acoustic guitar wielding, Guinness slurpin’, occasional house husbandry superstar, Father and twittering novice to at least surpass the population of the beautiful Isle O’ Jura??

www.twitter.com/ColinClyne