Darts, Tweets and ‘Defer-mating’

From Yahoosport 17/11/12:

Darts fans have been forced to apologise to former BDO world champion Ted Hankey after accusing him of playing while drunk - when in fact he had suffered a stroke.

Hankey appeared disoriented and suffered a comprehensive 5-0 defeat to Michael van Gerwen, in which he averaged just 59 and missed the board twice.

After the match, Hankey apologised for his performance, saying: "I was shocking I have had the flu since sun(day) night and couldn't see out my left eye".

However, this could not stem a tide of criticism accusing him of drunkenness [.]

But his manager David Stevenson has revealed the results of a hospital CT scan showing that Hankey suffered a stroke.

Holy Cow!

Stevenson tweeted: "The docs have confirm (sic) that @TedHankeyDarts has had a stroke he's got very high cholesterol and blood pressure and diabetes got to have 6/8 weeks rest and will need more tests in the coming weeks the doctors report will confirm this might use it to sue the people that have been defer-mating (sic) Teds [sic] character."

Yikes. You’ve got to watch out for that darn ‘defer-mating’ malarkey. It can land you in a whole heap of trouble – or so I’ve heard.  Ahem.

I guess the moral of the story (besides the need to remain vigilant for stroke symptoms displayed by men of a certain age and, ahem, lifestyle) is that while you might defame someone, you never, ever ‘defermate’ them.  That sounds like it’s something else entirely!!

I wish people proofread their tweets (or looked up things they weren’t sure of) before posting. It would make the web a much better place.