One of my favourite things about the internet is finding people with far too much time on their hands, writes Dan Wainwright.

I am aware that this is a rather ironic statement from a man sitting in his living room with a laptop scouring the web looking for people with too much time on their hands.

Take the brilliantly weird people on Twitter for example.

Someone has gone to the trouble of creating a Twitter account on behalf of bus company National Express West Midlands.

The @Travel_WM page appears on first glance to be a legitimate attempt by the company to engage with its passengers.

It’s not uncommon for a company to use Twitter as a way of not only promoting itself but countering any negative things people want to spout off about to their friends in the public domain of the worldwide web. Just try saying something nasty about BT and apparently they know all about it and respond.

Instead of customer service, however, anyone who dares voice their grumbles about the tardiness, cleanliness or otherwise of their bus gets a pithy put down from the anonymous user of @Travel_WM.

One such reply to a passenger was “Sorry to hear our service made you late! What route was it? If you do get sacked, we’re recruiting for our Bus Washing team!”

Depressingly for the good folks at the real National Express West Midlands their official accounts have fewer followers than the fake.

I use this, completely unscientifically, as proof of something I have known for years. No-one uses Twitter to engage with people, share ideas or search for products and services.

Why watch Panorama or Dispatches on the on demand services when you can see someone dressed up as Sylvester the Cat putting a grey-haired woman in a bin on YouTube?

Talking of Mary Bale, the Coventry woman who became infamous for 15 minutes by putting a poor, defenceless cat in the bin, her fake Twitter account now has more than 30,000 people checking out her various “momentary aberrations”, which usually involve doing horrible things to her friend Brenda. A recent entry was “At a do. My niece and her beau have decided to delay announcing their engagement until the ring has passed through my digestive tract”.

That confirms it for me. All these people following the likes of the fake Mary Bale and the fake National Express use Twitter the same as they use the rest of the internet – for procrastinating and looking for a cheap giggle.