By this week Ben had attracted more than 10,000 followers with punctuation-free missives such as “theres no vegetarian pastes sorry but why not try the crab spread its only crabs”, "on a scale of 1 to 8 how engaged do you feel with the shippams brand today” and “once i tried to ask a girl out but i accidentally threw an egg at her”.
His tweets, already archived, were often appended with his trademark hashtag, #paste.
Unfortunately for Ben’s many fans, his popularity also attracted the attention of Prince’s, the food and drink firm behind Shippam’s pastes. Today the account was shut down by Twitter after Prince’s complained its brand was being impersonated, in breach of the microblogging site’s terms and conditions.
“It was bought to out attention by people asking if it was an official account,” a Prince’s spokesman said.
“We got calls from people asking who Ben was and if he worked for us. We investigated and he didn’t.”
He said the firm approached Twitter two weeks ago to complain.
“We did get the joke and it was genuinely funny, warm and endearing,” the spokesman said.
“It’s just I don’t think there’s many brands that would let someone impersonate them online. You’ve got someone pretending to be you, and there are people out there who might not get the joke.”
Ed Jefferson, the Londoner behind Ben and @shippamspaste said it started as “part-prank, part-experiment”.
“I sort of just wanted to see what would happen and whether I could get people to notice it,” he said.
“I picked Shippam's because the brand fitted with the joke rather than because I had any particular issues with the company.”
The closure of the account today outraged Ben’s followers, who have managed to get #paste trending in London. The story could yet have a happy ending for Ben, however, who once said "i really need this internship to develop my skills in e business".
“We would actually quite like to talk to him,” Prince’s spokesman said.
The Telegraph has put the two sides in touch.
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