The UK’s Top 40 tech celebs – and why Stephen Fry isn’t number 1

Thursday, July 16th, 2009

When I volunteered to write a feature about the most techie celebrities from these fair British Isles, I hadn’t anticipated the amount of work involved. I figured there would be around 15 celebs, maybe 20, who had been enticed into the wonderful world of Twitter, Facebook and blogging, but the list just kept on growing. I eventually settled on 40 as my cut-off point. Now to work out how to score it.

Fortunately my years working in the PC Pro Labs came to the rescue, and before I knew it I’d worked out a scoring system based on Twitter followers, interactivity, quality and quantity of blogs, techie knowledge and sheer amount of fame. Add it all up and out would pop a lovely number, somewhere between 1 and 100.

Naturally, the phrase “out would pop” is entirely untrue. I had to spend a good two weeks following each celebrity, checking for hints of their geekiness, before I could rate them with any authority. Then there was the small matter of trawling through blogs, Facebook accounts and even long-abandoned MySpace pages.

By the end, four men were vying for top position: TV and radio presenter Richard Bacon, comedian Dave Gorman, novelist Neil Gaiman and the inimitable Stephen Fry.

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