‘And the mouth on some of them… I recently remonstrated with one such young woman, asking her what sort of a man she hopes to attract by singing Mozart arias in the middle of the street. ‘I know not, gentle sir,’ she replied, ‘but may he have a thousand pounds a year and a sizeable estate in Derbyshire!’ Of course I threw her arse in the cells, the cheeky bitch.’

As reports of unbearably repressed sexual tension continue to dominate the headlines, victim support groups are keen to warn girls against the dangers of being overly flighty and coquettish. ‘Vulnerable young girls are leaving themselves wide open to approaches from bounders, highly inappropriate suitors and some downright villainous knaves,’ said a representative from Cadwatch, who offer a full range of counseling services to any girl who has been grossly misled as to the true nature of a gentleman’s character.

‘Every day we field calls from girls who have brought shame and disgrace upon their family name and quite ruined their sisters’ chances of making good marriages, purely on the promise of a moonlit elopement and a new bonnet.’

But many are quick to lay blame with education’s obsession with bombarding impressionable girls with images of gentler times and quaint manners. ‘It’s this stuff they read at school,’ said one mother, who is on her final warning from social services for allowing her teenage daughter to promenade unchaperoned in the Woking Peacock Centre. ‘All their mates are reading it and suddenly they’re off down Bluewater for the latest tulle-tucker. But it could be worse I suppose. On some of the streets round here, you’re lucky to go a few feet without getting caught up in a sabre duel, so we’re grateful for small mercies.’

‘Previous adaptations have developed the work slowly, building up expectations and tensions gradually and leaving hearts fluttering for anyone who was prepared to invest their time on it,’ said ITV head of production Grant Stainesworth, ‘but in today’s world we think we can tantalise and delight our audience, every night, just after a thirty minute ad for l’Oreal, with explosive yet compact scenes of sexual suggestion and aspiration.’

‘Every night,’ he promised, ‘for eight months, it’ll be like D’Arcy coming out of the lake for the first time. Except this time he’ll be clutching a Gilette razor and rubbing his smooth chin towards the camera.’

Twitter versions of a few classics have already been leaked; Wordsworth’s ‘Daffodils’ now goes; “I’m wandering; Can see loads of daffs.” Whereas Pride and Prejudice has been abridged to “Mr D. has huge pad, He’s proposed, have accepted.”
Some works cannot be pared down to just 140 characters however, and Hamlet requires the reader to stick with for several ‘Tweets’; “At mum’s wedding, food’s cold”, “Have seen ghost, has set me thinking”, “Watching a play, seems familiar”, “Disturbing levels of knife crime”, “Ophie’s topped herself”, “Must go, looks like might be a fight”

Accusations of dumbing down have been strongly refuted by a Twitter spokeswoman: ‘Twitterers often have no time to read books but this should not be allowed to prevent them from being able to pass themselves off as having more than just a superficial cultural education. On the contrary, the LitTwit service will give them a broad understanding of the content of classic works, certainly enough to be able to bluff when occasion demands. We also anticipate that LitTwit will be of use to students sitting English GCSE and A level exams, provided they can keep their mobiles hidden from the invigilators.’

Some commentators are however sceptical that Twitter really does plan to launch this service. Says one industry observer: “Personally I think this is a story dreamt up by Twitter’s PR company as a standby, ready to be rushed to the newsrooms of the world in case the supply of Twitter news stories threatens to dry up. Unfortunately I can’t see that happening any time soon’.