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The newspaper reports that the outgoing Microsoft supremo has been forced to abandon his Facebook account after receiving more than 8,000 friend requests a day.

The Microsoft boss spent up to half-an-hour every day "catching up with pals" on the social networking site, according to The Sun's ever-reliable Redmond mole. In fact, Gates liked Facebook so much he bought the company - well, 1.6% of it, in a <

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deal announced late last year.

"Sadly the attention does mean Bill has had to close the account which got him so hooked in the first place," one of Gates's "colleagues" tells the tabloid (we suspect it's Steve 'The Snitch' Ballmer).

However, Gates may have scrapped his profile in vain, according to one tech-literate Sun reader, who comments on the newspaper's website. "Why didn't he just disable messages and friend requests? Kinda strange when the richest man in the world isn't even capable of doing that," says the delectable Miss Evesham, 25, who refuses to disclose her location on her Sun profile, but we're guessing she's from somewhere in the, erm, Evesham area.

In fact, with technological prowess that outshines the Microsoft boss, we're beginning to wonder if Ms Evesham is actually the new brains behind the British PC maker, Evesham Technology, which more than a week after we first asked who was now running the company, is still to return our phone calls.

The plot thickens.