That's it I'm retiring from social media. It doesn't get any better than this.

Out of the blue, Gene Hunt (fictional Life on Mars detective from the 70s) starts to follow me on Twitter.

Better than that even, he really is following me on Twitter because he gets in touch with some tasty retro abuse.

All of which made me laugh out loud.

It also made me wonder what other fictional characters - or perhaps real, but long since dead characters - are out there living on in Twitterland?

Is there anyone else I need to know of? (Twitter's search feature was broken when I tried to look so no help there).

Oliver Reed might be entertaining. Peter Cook perhaps. Dorothy Parker wittier. Surely, you'd just need to load all the one liners into a bot and press start? Actually we just made a bot for a client that automatically answered frequently asked questions...

Tags: Twitter, Gene Hunt, Life on Mars, Oliver Reed, Dorothy Parker

PS - Gene's not as hard as he makes out, he wanted to kiss and make up in an email sent afterwards

UPDATE: seems I'm collecting the whole cast Chris Skelton, Annie Cartwright and Party Seven icon, Ray Carling