Oxford Circus Shooting Chineese Whispers Nuke Stike on Nike Town

Chineese Clown Shooting on Oxford Circus Investigated

About an hour and a bit ago I read a tweet saying there was a shooter on the rampage in Oxford Circus. Ahh / Ohh dear I thought. Really. Checked Sky News on Twittter. Nothing. Thought nothing of it. Five minutes after that another similar panicky tweet from someone else. Said to the girlfriend "Apparently there's been a shooting on Oxford Street". "Oh" she said and tottered off to the shops. Checked the BBC. Nowt. Thought this has twitter prank written all over it. Five minutes after that saw the this fantastic timeline of tweets by some Shoreditch tweep [ok twat] calling himself @abscond. Turns out the shooting was a photo shoot - hilarious.

Since then I've enjoyed the ensuing Chineese Whispers [#chineesetwispers - I coined that btw but like a twat spelt it wrong with two e's according to spell check], the panic, the reveal, secondary rumors and comedy tweets for what quickly became the trending topic of the day - Oxford Circus.

Apparently police are already investigating the incident and source of the rumours - if this is actually true I'm looking forward to the next "#iamspartacus" debacle in the news and @candicecbailey must be sh*tting bricks about now. P.S. I have pre coined the hashtag "#iamcandicecbaileycus" in advance too. Spell check doesnt like that either. The moral... Check your sources and your spelling. Goddamit I spelt "Strike" wrong too - ohh well it rhymes with "Nike" so thats ok. Etc.

Thank you Twitter for making my day.

UPDATE: Now you actually can read about the shooting that never was on Sky News. P.P.S. Sky News I think you'll find I beat you to the #crytwolf point - but good point well made anyway.

SHOPPING IMPACT: The GF got back about five minutes after this post went live and she hasnt mentioned the shooting at all. "Ohh" I'm thinking. All that shopping must be very distracting.

BLOW ME MEDIA MONKEYS: It's on the Guardian Media Monkey now as well. Indeed this shooting incident is indeed a social media case study in the making [like i sort of predicted hours ago].

FOR REAL: In The Evening Standard too. Did police deploy terror counter measures to curb public panic and shoot themselves in the foot? Do I smell a "training exercise" rat? Or is this just a load of fantastic twitter twaddle?