Ricky Gervais has revealed that he finds using Twitter useful when he's writing and that it helped him finish his new Channel 4 comedy series Derek.
The Office creator claimed that he used the social networking site as an editing tool and that it had aided him getting to the "essence of scenes".
"These Derek episodes were coming in at 40 minutes and I was getting depressed thinking I couldn't get them down to 26 minutes," said Gervais.
"The compression on Twitter made me start thinking about the words I don't need."
Gervais has nearly 4 million followers on Twitter and said that he enjoyed having debates with people on the site, claiming that his only irritation was "witlessness".
Talking about arguments he has on the site, he said: "I want to do two things on Twitter: explain what freedom of speech really means and what the burden of proof is.
"I do like getting into fights with people who think the earth is 5,000 years old. I will never get bored of people like that.
"Sometimes a retweet is funnier than a reply. My favourite one was 'everyone's entitled to their opinion, so shut up about your atheism'. I just retweeted that. Brilliant."
