Former Telegraph diary editor Tim Walker reveals how a story about Stephen Fry led him to be buried under a tsunami of abuse. Extract from his new book: Star Turns.

One autumnal day in 2013, Tony Gallagher, who was then my editor at The Daily Telegraph, happened to mention that he’d had breakfast at The Wolseley restaurant in St James’s, and, sitting not far from him, had been Stephen Fry and Andy Serkis, the actor best known for playing Gollum in The Lord of the Rings films.

Waiting for his own guest to arrive, Gallagher had been struck by how Fry, deep in conversation with Serkis, appeared to be addressing his millions of followers on Twitter while not actually touching a single key on his mobile phone.