My mate Damian Thompson recently had a go at the self-regarding concert pianist Angela Hewitt. He quoted extensively from Hewitt’s own blog, which lovingly records every compliment tossed in her direction by critics and fans (and adds a few of her own for good measure).

An outraged fan posted a complaint to Hewitt’s blog and was, in his own words, “enormously privileged” to receive a reply by email from Hewitt herself. He then pasted her reply in the comments section under Damian’s original post:

So what, precisely, is Ms Hewitt saying here? Sounds to me like she doesn’t rate Andrei Gavrilov’s mercurial playing. She didn’t quite use the phrase “half-crazed Russian butterfingers” but I fear that’s how the notoriously touchy Gavrilov will interpret it.

Also, like Hewitt, he has an army of wild-eyed fans. This could turn seriously nasty.