David Thorne

David R. Thorne (born 23 February 1972) is an Australian humourist, satirist, and Internet personality. His work has been featured on the BBC, the Late Show with David Letterman, The Ellen DeGeneres Show, and Late Night with Conan O'Brien. Thorne gained public recognition in late 2008 for an email exchange in which he attempts to pay an overdue bill with a drawing of a seven-legged spider. The exchange spread virally via email and social networking sites, leading to a surge of visitors to his website 27b/6 (27bslash6). 27b/6 features a collection of humorous emails and articles from Thorne's life. These and additional essays appear in Thorne's book, The Internet is a Playground. Published by Penguin Group and released on 28 April 2011, the book debuted at number four on the New York Times Best Seller list. Thorne says that he has been a long-time fan of satirists such as Ross Amorelli, Mil Millington, Chris Lilley, and Shaun Micallef, stating that they have all been a "constant source of amusement over the last few years". Much of Thorne's humour is biographical, often concerning his immediate family and work associates. 27bslash6 The name of Thorne's website (27bslash6) is a reference to Form 27B-6, a plot device in Terry Gilliam's Brazil, itself a reference to George Orwell's address - Apartment 6, 27B Canonbury Square, Islington, London. The website went from receiving a hundred hits a week from a small and consistent group of people to gaining a larger mainstream audience – a few thousand hits a day – when the article I Wish I Had a Monkey was listed on the Bored at Work website. Following the spider drawing page being posted on Digg, the 27bslash6 server crashed after taking over half a million hits in a 24-hour period before being moved to a dedicated server. The second server crashed following Thorne's next article, "Party in Apartment 3", in which Thorne repeatedly confirms he will attend a party he has not been invited to, before the site was moved to a third server in the US and has since continued to receive a large volume of traffic. The spider drawing itself became so popular that it was auctioned on eBay, where a user posted a high bid of US$10,000, but subsequently said he had no intention of paying.