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28 April 2013updated 26 Sep 2015 10:01am

Happy Ed Balls day, one and all

We just can't leave that infamous tweet alone.

By Caroline Crampton

Two years ago today, Ed Balls tweeted his own name:

It was a name search gone awry. But, crucially, the Shadow Chancellor never deleted it, so 15,000 of us have now enjoyed retweeting it, and a meme was born. Today, it is celebrated:

The man himself gave an interview to the Mirror yesterday, in which he expressed his bafflement at people’s fondness for tweeting his name (with a dig at Osborne thrown in for good measure):

I think the best thing I can do is not look at Twitter and bury my head in the sand – like George Osborne on the economy.

His tweet made “news”:

Google got in on the act (not really):

It even spread off Twitter into the real world:

And people have inserted it into the world of cartoons:

[If this kind of thing floats your boat, Buzzfeed has a pretty exhaustive list.]

As well as people just tweeting “Ed Balls” (and trust me, there will be lots of those today), it spawned copycat tweets:

There are even now “Ed Balls” hipsters:

And those who express their enjoyment through song:

Twitter will most likely feel like this today:

Have we reached “Peak Ed Balls”? The Guardian advises going for a walk in the sunshine instead, which might not be a bad idea…

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