Twitter user mistaken for PJ Harvey after Mercury win

A computer software developer from Newcastle has received thousands of messages of congratulations on Twitter after being mistaken for singer PJ Harvey.

Philip John Harvey's @pjharvey account on the microblogging site was flooded with tweets after Polly Jean Harvey won the Mercury Prize on Tuesday evening.

Speaking to BBC News, Phil Harvey said that he was cooking dinner when his phone started alerting him of constant messages of support from other Twitter users.

"I was just in my kitchen cooking my dinner when my phone started going off. I have it so it notifies me whenever someone mentions me, which happens quite rarely because I'm just an average guy on Twitter," he said.

He quickly realised what was going on and tweeted that he was not the singer PJ Harvey, but the fans did not believe him.

"I wasn't trying to be funny but Twitter thought it was funny and everyone started retweeting that message and then it just exploded," he said.

"I had all sorts of nonsense coming through, people accusing me of pretending to be PJ Harvey and I got some quite nasty messages. As well as lots of positive messages."

Phil Harvey, who was among the first UK users to sign up to Twitter, had received over 2,000 messages by the time he went to bed in the early hours of the morning.

After the mixup became clear to people, one user tweeted: "I shall follow you anyway but I expect an album by this time next year."

Phil Harvey has offered to let PJ Harvey have the @pjharvey account if Twitter will allow him to shift to the defunct @pharvey. But the singer's publicist has said that she does not use Twitter.