The insider’s guide to avoiding rookie errors

Damn you, internet! Sometimes I don’t know whether what you’re giving me is real or whether it’s being dreamed up by two stoned teenagers chained to a PC in someone’s basement, wondering whether to get the Domino’s deep-dish spectacular or not...

The latest version of this dilemma — truey or phooey, I call it — arose last week when someone called Sarah Lyall started tweeting from the NBA Rookie Transition Programme.

I assume Ms Lyall is an actual person, and the NBA Rookie Transition Programme is an actual event, because if neither exist, then they could only be invented by Flann O’Brien channelling Dave Eggers via Peter Cook.