This is one of those 'Wow, just wow!' stories. It has two strands, which come together in the most bizarre way.
Last spring, a flamboyant Twitter character called Banffers QC (whose old avatar photo is pictured, left) caused a storm when he was outed as a fake after offering several law students "pupillages at his chambers". At which point, @BanffersQC mysteriously vanished.
A year later, we ran what we thought was a completely unrelated story about the implausibly large number of Twitter followers of Lincolnshire police commissioner candidate Mervyn Barrett.
The story helped spur an investigation into Barrett by The Telegraph, which on Sunday revealed that his campaign was backed by what it termed "American neo-conservative lobbyists and companies pushing for police privatisation". Since the news broke, both Barrett and his campaign manager, Matthew Brown (who is also the chairman of one of the companies apparently backing Barrett), have quit.
Now, this is where the two strands come together...
