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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
National
Bonnie Christian

Ed Balls Day: Social media users celebrate day politician tweeted his own name eight years on

Former Labour MP Ed Balls is celebrated on social media today. (Picture: Getty Images)

Eight years on, social media users are celebrating Ed Balls Day, marking the occasion when the former Labour politician tweeted his own name.

It stems from April 28 2011, when Balls, then the shadow chancellor, accidentally posted a tweet which simply read "Ed Balls".

He had been intending to search the site for an article about him, but inputted his name in the wrong box and instead tweeted it.

It was retweeted by thousands of people and has never been deleted by Balls, who has embraced the joke in subsequent years, even going so far as to bake a cake depicting the tweet one year.

For many the day seems as exciting as it ever did.

Ed Balls himself celebrated the day, tweeting just his name and a photo of him wearing a Norwich City jersey with "Balls" written across the back.

It was enough to inspire poetry in some.

To many Balls is now as well known for his exploits on Strictly Come Dancing as for his political career, and many people referenced the show as they marked the day.

Others meanwhile found ways to mark the day in their own way.

Some queried when the day would become a bank holiday.

The National Trust tweeted a photo of a park trail thanking people for exploring their places on the "historic day".

RAF Lossiemouth tweeted a picture of their jets in formation spelling out "Ed" in the sky.

Perhaps his most notable celebration came in 2016 when, spurred on by wife Yvette Cooper, he baked a cake of the tweet in question.

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