Shock news: The President of the United States of America actually has more important things to do than update his Twitter profile all day.

The news is rather surprising since the Prez has a rather active Twitter account, and actually one of this last posts reads, "In Singapore, continuing the visit to Asia." Strange then that while on this Asian trip Obama took time out to tell a group of Chinese students that he doesn't use Twitter now, and never has.

Twitter apparently has attained legendary status amongst Chinese students in much the same way that Bruce Springteen records and blue jeans used to have amongst Russian ones, so one of them took the opportunity to ask Obama whether he thought it was fair and right that they could not use it behind the Chinese firewall.

"I have never used Twitter but I'm an advocate of technology and not restricting internet access," he replied. Plainly so, as he obviously doesn't have a problem surrending his login details to his lackies.

Obama's account has some 2.7m followers and is one of those fancy 'verified' accounts. Regular readers will either be disappointed, or relieved that he has decided he has better things to do than tell people every time he goes to the toilet.

Perhaps the leader of the free world is trying to cosy up to Tory leader David Cameron in refusing to be associated too closely with the micro-blogging tool - a popular haunt for self-obsessed morons. Cameron famously told breakfast radio listeners a couple of months ago that politicians who use Twitter risk making "a twat" out of themselves.