Sun's head of PR in contender for worst apology ever

This week will forever be known as the week when everyone thought topless photos of women on Page 3 of the Sun had been killed off, but in fact they actually hadn't at all. We know, what a time to be alive.

But keeping the story going is the tabloid's head of PR, Dylan Sharpe, who could have done with some PR advice himself after posting this very ill-advised tweet (which is still up) on Thursday morning after it was revealed, after all, that topless women would still be appearing in the Sun, despite a report in its sister paper the Times to the contrary.

Yes, that is a newspaper's head of PR tweeting two images of a topless woman to four journalists and a politician, the latter of whom, Harriet Harman, wasn't even involved in the story.

Sharpe has now admitted, in a statement issued to BuzzFeed News, that he made a "big, stupid, mistake", and apologised to those he mentioned in the tweet, which he said was supposed to be funny.

That would be all fine and well if that was all he said, but unfortunately he included 700 other words before the apology beginning with:

Hi. My name is Dylan Sharpe. Nominally I'm the Head of PR for The Sun, but you may also know me as "cckwomble", "cnt" or "creepiest guy on Twitter"TM. This is my story…

He went on:

Twitter had decided I was doing it to belittle, to attack, to demean. By 10am I had gained 500 followers, a hate campaign and a parody account.

By 11am The Huffington Post (whose job, I have learned, is to tell their readers what they should be angry about in The Sun) had written an article about me and how horrible a human I was.

By midday I was receiving death threats and being told I was the most vile person that had ever lived. I left Twitter alone for a few hours.

When I returned around 6ish a proper journalist, writing for The Independent, had written about me. Simon Usborne - he normally writes about cycling and the environment - today he'd picked up his pitchfork and joined the hate mob.

At 11pm the final ignominy. I was backed by a UKIP MEP on Question Time. The nail in my mouldy, hated, coffin.

Read the full statement at BuzzFeed News

More: [The gulf between male and female attitudes to Page 3, in four charts]6