By his own admission the MP Tom Harris was a rather naughty boy. The former transport minister was “once caught nicking a roll of Sellotape from a newsagent” and on another occasion “threw a banger (firework, not sausage) at an off-duty policeman”.

In one particularly entrepreneurial moment Harris, Labour MP for Glasgow South, gave his “big brother’s new two-piece suit to the rag-and-bone man in return for a yellow balloon”.

As if those crimes were not heinous enough, he has also been guilty of going to watch Bucks Fizz, the Eurovision-winning 1980s pop group, play live. Twice.

Suddenly Harris is in danger of emerging from the Westminster necropolis as an altogether more human figure than the average backbench zombie. How have such arcana surfaced about him? Because Harris been struck by a phenomenon now sweeping the internet known as “25 random things about me”.

In recent weeks “25 random things” has spread like wildfire through Facebook and blogs, as people voluntarily list incidents and oddities about themselves and then “tag” 25 others to do the same.

“It’s all gospel, every bit of it,” said Harris this weekend of his list, which he has published on his blog. “It’s fun, but one of the points of being a blogger is also trying to remind people that politicians are people too.”

Another who caught the list bug this month was John Prescott, the former deputy Labour leader. He noted as the first of his “25 random things” that he’s been to see the film Billy Elliot, about a working-class boy who struggles to become a ballet dancer, six times.

“It’s the only film that’s made me cry,” he blogged. What a scrambled old class warrior he is. For Prescott also lists his penchant for croquet, which many might see as a toff’s game. At No 23 on his list is: “Pauline [his wife] claims she’s better at croquet than me. I beg to differ.” Prescott, of course, caused a furore when he was photographed playing croquet at a country mansion in 2006 while he was supposed to be running the country in the absence of Tony Blair.

While Prescott lists Chinese as his favourite food, Nick Clegg, the Liberal democrat leader, appears bolder. The first of his 25 random things is: “The weirdest thing I have ever eaten is fried bees in China.”

Clegg, you might think, sounds like a fearless action man. Study his list more closely, however, and he comes across as too slick by half. He oils his eco-credentials with his second entry: “My favourite way to get to work is on my electric moped.” Then he slips in his cleverness: “Of the five languages I speak, I like German the best.” And he makes sure we know he’s a tech-savvy family man: “My sons usually beat me at the boxing on our Wii.”

Rather more spiky is a “25 random things” list about the Lib Dems put together by a party member called Stephen Tall. At No 19 on his list, Tall, a former Lib Dem councillor, notes: “Our leader Nick Clegg was given community service aged 16 after setting fire to a rare collection of cacti in a drunken prank.”

As the next item he lists: “In 1973 Chris Huhne [a senior Lib Dem MP] used a bench to smash his way into Oxford University’s Indian Institute.” And he follows that with: “Notwithstanding these last two points, the party firmly believes ‘We can cut crime!’”

Chain letters and viral e-mails have blitzed round online communities many times before, and sceptics suggest there may have been a commercial impetus to this latest fad. It seems to have taken root in Facebook, the social networking site. Many lists have been published using the “notes” blogging section of the Facebook site: in the week to February 2 more than 5m notes were created, double the number in the previous week and an all-time record.

Though Facebook’s rise is still meteoric – it reached 150m users in January, just four months after hitting 100m users – there has been some evidence of a backlash recently.

In America, where it originated, the growth in new registrations has flattened out. Some users have talked of “defriending” after finding the blizzard of social trivia tedious, and the value of the site has fallen, by some estimates, from $15 billion to $2.5 billion. So it would welcome any rise in its traffic thanks to “25 random things”.

A Facebook group has sprung up among users whose declared mission is to get President Barack Obama to produce his list. Another is called “I refuse to list 25 things about myself”. Some bloggers have derided the lists as pointless and annoying – and then affixed their own.

The phenomenon, however, is much more than a marketing gimmick. Compiling the lists combines self-analysis with the lack of inhibition encouraged by the web.

“This is all to do with the psychology of the internet,” said Mark Griffiths, professor of psychology at Nottingham Trent university. “The internet is a non-face-to-face, nonthreatening, disinhibiting medium. People reveal things about themselves that they would never do face to face, even when someone knows who you are. People are projecting part of their personality.”

What you choose to list, however random you may think it is, says something about you. “It gives a message even if there isn’t a message ... intended,” said Griffiths. “It’s a bit like what pictures we put up in our homes, or how we stack our bookshelves.”

What would you include on your list of 25 random things about yourself? And what is one to make of Mike Dover, a contributor to a blog on economics, who includes in his list at No 22: “I was once bitten by an emu. I deserved it”?

Or the blogger John Girvin, who notes at No 20 on his list: “If I wasn’t a software developer, I would likely be an electrician like my three brothers. Or possibly a long distance lorry driver. Maybe a hitman.”

Even those who make an overt joke of their list give something away about themselves. Make what you will of “Iron Mike”, a US blogger, who begins his list with: “I once devoured a Filipino child just to prove I could.” At No 16 he notes: “My parents thought I was retarded until I was 4. They began thinking I was retarded again when I was 12, 19, and 33.” He doesn’t state his current age.

It was this potential insight into character that lured Iain Dale, a British political blogger, to take part in “25 random things” even though he is wary of internet crazes. “Some of these things that go round the internet are incredibly boring,” he said. “But the way some people have done these lists is really interesting.”

When Dale compiled his own thoughts he admitted at No 13: “As an 11-year-old I fancied Esther Rantzen [the former television presenter] something rotten.” He grew up to be gay. And at No 20, he confessed: “I own more than 120 Cliff Richard CDs.”

Surely that can’t possibly be true. Nobody would buy 120 different Cliff Richard CDs. “Er, well, yes I did,” Dale explained yesterday. “Strangely, I went to see him at the London Palladium in 1978 when he reformed with The Shadows and, um, I’m the sort of person that if I buy an album of somebody and I like it, I end up buying everything.

“So I have got virtually everything he’s ever done – compilations, the lot.”

It could be worse. At least it wasn’t Bucks Fizz.

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