Meet The British Girl Who Becomes Online Celebrity Over Night For Saying ‘Barraco Barner’ Is The President Of Britain

Last week Monday, a 20-year-old British girl, Gemma Worral did what millions of people do every day and sent a tweet. She had been watching a news programme about the unrest in Ukraine and decided — in hindsight, unwisely — to get involved in the debate.

‘If barraco barner is our president, why is he getting involved with Russia, scary,’ Gemma wrote.

Within 12 hours, her comment had been retweeted almost 7,000 times. In the immediate aftermath of her tweet, she says she found the whole thing hilarious. But now, stunned by the global reaction, she says she feels responsible for the detrimental effect it is having on her family.

It was in the early hours of Monday that she decided to send her ill-fated tweet in what she refers to as her ‘ditzy moment.

Making the most powerful man in the world sound more like the fizzy vitamin supplement Berocca is one thing. Demoting him to leader of the UK is quite another.

Gemma said, ‘I can’t remember what programme it was — I don’t normally watch the news at all — but this thing came on about Ukraine and I didn’t really understand it,’ she says. ‘I picked up my phone and decided to tweet.’

She claims that the unfortunate Barraco Barner misspelling was down to an ‘auto-correct’ facility on her iPhone which changed what she originally wrote. Do we really believe her? I type ‘Barack Obama’ on my own iPhone. Nothing happens. Then I try ‘Barraco Barner’. Immediately, my iPhone corrects my intentional misspelling to ‘Barack Obama’. She claims that the unfortunate Barraco Barner misspelling was down to an ‘auto-correct’ facility on her iPhone which changed what she originally wrote. ‘I really do know how to spell it,’ she insists. ‘Although it’s not the easiest name to spell and I bet loads of people get it wrong. But as for the President [of Britain] bit . . . well, yes, I don’t know what I was thinking there. What can I say? I do sound really stupid.’

‘Yes, ‘I know who the prime Minister is, she continued, ‘David Cameron. I’m really not as stupid as everyone is making out.’
‘I only had 400 followers before all this, and so if I said anything amusing I usually only got around three retweets. But that morning, when I looked, I’d had 50 retweets and had gained another 1,300 followers.

‘I went to work and put my phone in my locker but it kept going off all the time — it alerts me every time I have a new tweet. I rang a friend and said: “What’s going on?” and she couldn’t speak for laughing.

Gemma sent the tweet and thought no more about it. But in the morning she realised she had become an online celebrity.

‘I looked back at the tweet I’d sent and realised immediately what I’d done. I thought: “Oh God! That makes me sound so stupid.” But I kept it on there because it seemed to be making people laugh.’

‘The next day, I thought it would have died down. But a friend rang and told me my tweet was trending in the UK. I was even in newspapers in Australia. I was in shock.’

 

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Reaction: Despite deleting the original tweet, screengrabs of it appeared on Australian and Belgian news