Stephen Fry may be a national treasure to some, but to most of those who follow his regular musings on Twitter he is rather more.

The self-titled “British Actor, Writer, Lord of Dance, Prince of Swimwear & Blogger” has almost a million followers on the site and his posts are treated with due reverence. But when one fellow micro-blogger dared to suggest that they might be a little boring, it was all too much.

In a fit of pique Fry announced that he would abandon Twitter. And he did ... for about the length of time that it took him to catch a flight and land in Los Angeles.

Fry, who has publicly chronicled his struggle with manic depression, announced the end of his Twitter love affair after sparring with another user called BrumPlum, otherwise known as Richard, who wrote: “I admire and adore” Fry, but added that he found his tweets “a bit . . . boring . . . (sorry Stephen)”.

BrumPlum was immediately inundated with abuse and complaints, and Fry was prompted to interrupt his tweets on the new Sony Vaio to reply. Fry told the world that he “may have to give up on Twitter” because there was “too much aggression and unkindness around”.

Fry’s parting tweet concluded: “Pity. Well it’s been fun.”

He stepped off his flight the following morning and promptly resumed his tweets. He wrote: “A mood thing. Sunshine will help. So sorry.” Fry has continued to receive thousands of messages of support.

GracieMcKenna tweeted: “I’m so pleased that Stephen Fry is not leaving Twitter! He adds too much to go. (((Hugs))) to you Stephen.”

Another wrote: “dont give up stephen fry i signed up to twitter to follow you and i dont want you to leave just now”.

Fry has been lauded for being “almost single-handedly” responsible for the proliferation of Twitter users in Britain, especially among the over-35s, who make up more than 60 per cent of users. Hundreds of thousands have read his micro-blogs on subjects from being stuck in a lift to the death of Jade Goody.

After a Tweet attack on the Daily Mail columnist Jan Moir, for her comments on the death of Stephen Gately of Boyzone, the Press Complaints Commission received more than 1,000 complaints — a record for the monitoring body.

“I love how Twitter confirms my all too often assaulted belief that most humans are kind, curious, knowledgeable, tolerant and funny,” Fry wrote on his blog in April. The twitterati can only hope that his faith is restored.

Stephen Fry's finest

• Bleugh. Whoever invented the breakfast meeting should be roundly spanked

• Of all inventions coat hangers behave the least well. Entirely slappable entities at the best of times

• There way be something in the world stupider than flavoured vodka, it’s just that I can’t for the moment think what it might be

• Just had a lunch. No, not a lunch. A LUNCH. Of the kind popularised last century. I may never bend in the middle again

• Just heard the very sad news about dear Stephen Gately. He was loveable and sweet natured and will be hugely missed

• I gather a repulsive nobody writing in a paper no one of any decency would be seen dead with has written something loathesome and inhumane

Source: Twitter.com