…A GREAT How we became a hit in the internet age

EVERY week millions of people observe two Saturday night traditions: carefully checking their National Lottery numbers – and logging onto social media site Twitter to get a sneak preview of the next day’s Sunday Sport headlines.

Because Britain’s brightest newspaper is also the internet’s favourite publication.

Every Saturday, at around 9pm, tasters of the next day’s headline are posted on Twitter – and they go, as internet types say, viral.

Salute

Twitter has brought the world’s most outrageous newspaper to a whole new generation – a generation who have largely deserted Britain’s traditional print media for the wonders of e- words.

And the big players in electronic publishing have been quick to salute Sunday Sport.

News site Buzzfeed regularly runs “best of” collections of our recent headlines, as do comedy sites Sick Chirpse and The Poke.

Football fan site Who Ate All the Pies raved about our story of a Newcastle United fan bummed to death by a zebra.

Even the very posh Independent newspaper ran a collection if its 21 favourite Sunday Sport headlines. Meanwhile, respected online magazine Vice called us “geniuses” and last week ran a feature marking our 30th birthday in which we were called “a great British institution”.

And comedy legends have also saluted our stories.

Stephen Fry was delighted by our story about a gran shitting in a Chinese buffet, while Ricky Gervais was intrigued by a penniless former millionaire who now sucks off dogs in return for Quavers. Even politicians love us. Fun- loving former Labour boss Ed Miliband read out our story about his late father running over a kitten in 1944 in a video m essage to the party faithful.

Sunday Sport Head of Future Gary Doran said: “Our aim is to expand the Sunday Sport brand, going forward, across all platforms.

“In terms of the future, Sunday Sport is, quite literally, in a very real sense, limitless.”