Which part of this don't you get?

Grace Dent. I'm not really a fan. Nothing against her, you understand. But I'm not really in the market for teen fiction, I don't watch enough TV to require the insights of a TV critic, and when I have seen her on the box she's not struck me as particularly funny.

But yesterday I found myself defending her. She was under attack from all sides. Zillions of foes piling in. Not physical attacks, thankfully. Just words on screens. Yes, another of these fucking Twitter storms.

For those who don't know, during Dent's Saturday night appearance on Have I Got News For You, a fellow named Mufadal Jiwaji decided to opine thus, also via Twitter: "@gracedent reminds me of a girlfriend I once had. By girlfriend I mean that time I accidentally made love to an ugly abhorrent horse". 

No big deal, right? When people in the public eye choose to use Twitter and thereby rub virtual shoulders with the great unwashed, they become fair game for anyone who wants to weigh in with an insult, right? Never mind that few of the people who direct piss-taking tweets to complete strangers would have the bollocks to do so in person. That's irrelevant, yeah? Twitter is different. The internet isn't real. 

Well, no. That's not how I see it at all. But never mind that. That's a whole other discussion, and it's been pretty well covered here with reference to Twitter storm-bringers such as Liam Stacey, Oliver Warren and Paul Brennan.

The big deal about the little altercation which followed Jiawji's remark, though, was that:

• Dent actually responded to him
• she noticed he was working for a PR firm of which she is a client
• her response suggested she would get him fired

Quite a few people took objection to the idea of Dent threatening to have this chap sacked. A couple different kinds of criticism predominated:

• accusations of hypocrisy because she's known to make the odd unkind remark herself
• that she needed to lighten up and avoid reacting so strongly to something so trivial

For me, Comments of this nature seemed to be missing the point by several miles, though.

Imagine you pay a chunk of what you earn to a PR company to handle your publicity, manage your reputation and, by discharging those two responsibilities, to help you prosper in your line of work. Imagine one of their employees addresses you directly in insulting terms. Imagine he does this in public or via on online platform, meaning that it's witnessed by hundreds or even thousands of other people. Be honest. You'd probably complain to the guy's boss, right? Even if you didn't demand the guy's dismissal, your complaint wouldn't really do him any favours at work, would it? But fuck it. He's broken a golden rule - don't insult a customer. Or to put it another way, don't bite the hand that feeds the firm that pays your wages.

It really seemed extraordinary that so many people didn't think of this little teacup tornado in these terms. So, being an interfering old busybody, I felt the need to point this out several times. I found myself asking several people whether they would complain if an employee of an firm with which they do business suddenly decided to speak to them in the way that Jiwaji had addressed Dent. Then I ran out of steam and lost interest. But if you don't see the difference between being insulted by a someone with whom you have no professional connection and being insulted by someone who works for a firm that charges you for its services, then you and I are just not on the same wavelength. Let's leave it there.

Naturally, the tiny tempest soon ran out of puff and those who had briefly taken an interest did indeed decide to turn their attention to other diversions.

But, moving on into today, Dentgate (surely this thing deserves a -gate suffix, yeah?) seems to have taken a new twist. Can it really be a coincidence that all this hoo-ha involving Grace Dent blew up almost immediately before it was announced that she was switching her column writing activities from the Guardian to the Independent? Would it be much too cynical to assume that Jiwaji was asked to pull off a stunt in order to raise a client's profile just ahead of her move to the Indescribablyboring?

It would be kind of shitty to have briefly stepped in gallantly to defend someone only to find out that she'd mugged everybody right off with a PR stunt, wouldn't it?