As Twitter slowly ekes its way into the public consciousness – and it has a considerable way still to go – various… people you’ve heard of… or might have heard of… famous people… OK, celebrities… various celebrities have signed up and started twittering.

So who are these slebs, and where be they? Here are an assortment of folk you may have come across by rough category.

Politicians and government

Chris Reed has already discovered that there are only four MPs currently on Twitter – and that’s if you count Number 10.

• 10 Downing Street (official tweets from the PM’s house)
• Tom Watson (Labour MP for West Bromich East)
• Lynne Featherstone (LibDem MP for Hornsey & Wood Green)
• Jo Swinson (LibDem MP for East Dunbartonshire)
• Grant Shapps (Conservative MP for Welwyn Hatfield)
• Al Gore (former VP of the US of A)
• Andy Reed (Labour MP for Loughborough)
• Graham Watson (Lib Dem MEP for South West England and Gibraltar)

The UK Parliament also has a feed, as there are official and unofficial accounts for various government departments. And, of course, there are various feeds for US election candidates, including the now fairly quiet (and never that human) Barack Obama feed.

Musicians

• Britney Spears (formerly @therealbritney, she’s a singer and the posts come from her team and herself)
• Dave Matthews (of the Dave Matthews Band)
• MC Hammer (yes, seriously, MC Hammer of “U Can’t Touch This” fame)
• Patrick Wilson (the drummer from Weezer)
• Imogen Heap (singer I saw live in about 1997)

Actors and broadcasters

• Brea Grant (plays Daphne Millbrook in Heroes)
• Greg Grunberg (plays Matt Parkman in Heroes)
• Robert Llewellyn (actor, comedian, broadcaster and writer who played Kryten in Red Dwarf)
• Wil Wheaton (best known as Wesley Crusher on Star Trek, he’s a blogger, writer, stand-up comedian, poker player…)
• John Cleese (actor, writer, comedian and Python, probably most famous for his party political broadcast for the Liberal/SDP Alliance)
• Stephen Fry (of A Bit of Fry and Laurie, Jeeves and Wooster, QI and V for Vendetta fame – as if you didn’t know)
• Rory Cellan-Jones (BBC technology – and sometimes business – correspondent)
• Tina Fey (from Saturday Night Live and 30 Rock)
• David H. Lawrence (plays Eric Doyle in Heroes)
• Jonathan Ross (of Jonathan Ross Show fame)

Writers and artists

• Paul Cornell (writer of three episodes of <DOCTOR.WHO>, plus other TV, books and comics)
• Warren Ellis (author of comics and novels)
• Zoe Margolis (author of the book and blog Girl with a One Track Mind)

plus various tech journalists.

Sportists

• Andy Murray (tennis player of “Come on, Andy!” fame)
• Will Carling (described on his Twitter feed as “old has-been rugby player”)

Internet celebrities

• Robert Scoble (blogger and technical evangelist)
• Kevin Rose (founder of Digg.com)

and no doubt, by definition, many more.

So… who have I missed?

How’s this for tag lag? Lynne Featherstone tagged me with this meme 14 months ago. Better late than never – and there’s nothing like a meme to get me blogging.

My first political memory was probably from November 1990. (I definitely helped deliver leaflets in an election prior to 1997 but I don’t know if it was 1987 or 1992 – or, I suppose, whether it was a general election at all.)

I was in my first year of secondary school when Margaret Thatcher was seriously challenged for the leadership of the Conservative Party. What with her being PM – not to mention the area being quite Tory – it was a big deal and I remember us discussing it in one of our lessons.

Knowing pretty much nothing about politics, I was convinced that she would win. This was probably a symptom of having lived my entire life under her premiership.

Time makes fools of us all.

In which I engage in a quest in pursuit of hidden letters.

As I was preparing to leave work last night, I got a notification that “wherenext” had followed me on Twitter.

@wherenext’s profile sent me off to What is the question?, which appeared to be a Masquerade style treasure hunt. Presented with clues, the task is to find 43 object hidden in a square mile of London – the very part I travel to every day.

The clues stumped me for a bit but eventually I worked out they were referencing various blogs (had I seen the Guardian story previewing the game I’d have been there quicker!). These blogs have within them pointers to locations on the map. I discovered that one of the locations was behind my office and another couple on a (slightly circuitous) route home, so I passed by all of them in the evening darkness – and found nothing.

Before I go on I should mention – as the Guardian article explains – that the game is promoting the campaign site XDRTB.org, which is creating awareness of extreme drug-resistant tuberculosis. It was set up by photojournalist James Nachtwey, who captured these harrowing images:

Last night, I worked on the clues and came up with most of the locations, with a clear pattern forming on the map. I got up at a quarter past six this morning to catch an early train and begun by traipsing around Waterloo armed with my mobile phone’s GPS and Google Maps.

I wasn’t sure how hidden the items would be and didn’t really want to draw attention to myself (even at 7am there were people around) so I didn’t clamber around the first grid point too much. Probably as a result, I didn’t find whatever it was I was looking for. I’d seen something on Twitter about photographing yourself in the location even if you didn’t find the object, so I did that:

A short walk away at the next location, I again failed to find anything. And then, after a longer walk, I found myself on the south bank of the Thames opposite the House of Parliament.

Failure there too.

Next stop was York Road, ascertained from a clue on Bill Thompson’s blog. I peered around as nonchalantly as possible as commuters from Waterloo passed by. And there, concealed behind a plant pot, I found…

Each photograph is accompanied by a character, in this case an O, and the 43 characters will make up a question. Identifying that question is the key to winning the game.

The excitement of this discovery – photograph quickly moblogged – was quickly followed up with more failures, and a while later with two more successes, one near Embankment tube and one close to Parliament Square. I was impressed that the team behind the game had managed to place so many objects in sensitive areas without causing security alerts (yet).

I covered around 20 sites and around 7 miles in more than two hours of hunting, got plenty of exercise (not least lugging my laptop with me) and got to know bits of London I pass near every day in much more detail (including passing through Horse Guards Parade for the first time).

At lunchtime I returned to a couple of the sites from last night and found the daylight made all the difference: two more successes. At the time of writing, nine of the objects have been revealed.

I’ve now solved (hopefully correctly) all the clues and identified 43 locations. To help me track down the objects, I’ve programmed the locations into Google Maps on my phone, and they appear to form a recognisable pattern:

There are 15-20 locations I’ve not been to yet. I’ll see if I have the energy for another early start tomorrow.

And, of course, you can play the game too…

Today is National Poetry Day, and that means it’s time for my annual poem (as featured previously in 2004, 2005, 2006 and 2007).

This year’s doesn’t fit on the blog very well, so please have a read in a new window and then come back here to let me know what you think or to report a bug.