In her latest Advertiser column, Ruth Wishart shares her take on Elon Musk's $44 billion takeover of Twitter.

* * * * * * * * * * * * * * * * *

He’s calling himself the “chief twit” and who are we to argue?

Elon Musk’s multi billion pound purchase of Twitter, at the very moment big tech is seeing its share value going south, reminds me all too vividly of my putting my house on the market the day before the 2008 crash.

Mr Musk, according to taste, is a total genius, innovator and supreme entrepreneur or, to slightly mis-quote the Life of Brian, a very silly boy.

Then again, silly boys don’t generally wind up the richest bloke on the planet.

My own fear, as a minor league addict, is that he doesn’t muck up Twitter which, whilst undoubtedly capable of sewer-like contributions from the hard of thinking, is also a rich source of news and information and, not infrequently, can be very witty.

The omens are not good thus far. He’s trying to monetise it, more porn has apparently arrived, and there’s the horrible prospect of Trump being let loose on the platform again, along with some other banned loonies - and then, on Friday, the news of major cuts to Twitter's staff.

Those of us rather more innocently swapping Wordle scores and thoughts on the latest Strictly eviction would like our wee hobby back. Preferably without having to pay for the privilege.

He’s already talking about charging those adherents with a blue tick (used to convey good boys and girls – I don’t have one!), and ere long he’ll be putting the commercial boot into the rest of us.

Away and play with your space ships.