CNN; Ian Derry / FOXWe knew it was only a matter of time before the newly tweeting Simon Cowell engaged in a Twitter feud, but we didn't think he'd manage to embroil himself in such a contentious battle in less than a day.
Though in fairness, while The X Factor judge certainly seemed to take pleasure in continuing the all-in-good-fun ribbing he doled out to Piers Morgan, the online wrath was incurred through no fault of his own.
So what sparked this bitter Brit-off?
The most benign of tweets, actually.
"It's official, I know it's taken a while. It's really me! love #iamsimon," read Cowell's first introductory tweet, sent just yesterday evening.
And that was apparently all the bait the CNN pundit needed.
"At last! Bring. It. On. Love #iampiers," he responded, thus igniting the Twitter exchange, quickly responding to another of Cowell's tweets, encouraging fans to tune in to last night's reality show.
"Save your breath @SimonCowell-nobody's watching X Factor, my show's about to start #CNN @PiersTonight."
That was enough to temporarily wake the sleeping lion.
"@piersmorgan look up the word deluded in your dictionary," Cowell fired off, yielding yet another batch of fighting words from a clearly attention-seeking (but still slightly amusing) Morgan.
"Comes before 'demolished'—ironically what I'll do to you on here."
Me-ow, boys.
Still, while Cowell seemed to leave things there, Morgan didn't, and was back in fighting form this morning, when he seemed to take delight in pointing out that his Twitter followers—at 1.47 million to Simon's 219,000—dwarfed his competitor.
Of course, bear in mind that that's after less than 24 hours and that by the end of the year (if not much, much sooner), odds are that those proportions will be reversed. Not that that was much of a deterrent to Morgan's smack-talking.
"Morning @SimonCowell," he tweeted bright and early today. "Still 1.3 MILLION followers behind me. As you would tell a contestant: 'There's a LOT of work to do, luv.' " (Someone's certainly got a lot of free time on his hands.)
Meanwhile, after his initial missive to Morgan, Cowell seemed to lose interest in the goading and instead set his verbal venom on those he has already beat in the Twitter race—his fellow judges.
"I love being on twitter," he wrote. "Thank you for allowing me to beat the other 3 in the popularity poll. Paula looked like she'd sucked on a lemon!"
Well, you know what they say: If life hands you lemons, make lemonade start a Twitter feud. Welcome to the club, Cowell. This is gonna be fun.