I’ve been thinking for a whilst about a pseudonym. I imagine such a wheeze crosses every writer’s mind. It would detach one from an acreage of queasy reviews and ugly head shots. It would be a sort of rebirth.

The problem is that, as well as sweeping away any failures and embarrassments, a pseudonym erases any successes, too. Simply getting published — or, in television and radio, getting made — generates a certain momentum.

A writer who has enjoyed a reasonable amount of commercial success is Stephen King. In 1977, King published Rage, a psychological thriller, under the pseudonym Richard Bachman. Four other Bachman books followed, culminating in Thinner in 1982, before his cover was blown by an inquisitive reader who recognised King’s style and looked up the novel’s copyright in the Library of Congress. King’s justification for the caper was simple curiosity. The secret out, sales of Thinner jumped from tens of thousands to over a quarter of a million.

For plenty of other writers, the revelation of their true identity presents more serious consequences than a sudden uptick in sales. Amongst this group, we have the whistleblowers, the incognito contributors brave enough to publish insights into the mayhem currently thundering through our institutions. Sometimes they use pseudonyms; sometimes the simple soubriquet “Anonymous” (a catch-all nom de plume, not to be confused with the excellent poet).

Historically, pseudonyms offered a neat way to sidestep prejudice and outrage. Mary Ann Evans wrote as George Eliot to disguise her sex. The Brontë sisters moonlit as the Bell brothers for similar reasons. Robin Maugham, nephew of Somerset, published The Wrong People as David Griffin (if you know the book, you’ll know why).

Occasionally, pen names crop up in television. The comedian Ronnie Barker famously wrote as Gerald Whiley. Back in the 1970s, when Doctor Who not only allowed right-wingers to work on it, but had survived and indeed thrived for half a decade whilst being creatively led by one, a now freelance Terrance Dicks was appalled to discover his scripts for a new adventure had been rewritten. “Put it out under some bland pseudonym!” he fumed. So The Brain of Morbius by Robin Bland was born — a joke Dicks appreciated.

The libs were hooked — like blubbering salmon hoist from the Tay

Thankfully, as a result of “progress”, we now have Twitter, and Twitter is an engine of pseuds. Accounts like The Secret Barrister peddle their high status, low risk opinions and flog books.

Perhaps my favourite from this category is R S Archer, recently covered by this magazine. An author sans oeuvre, the wag behind this account realised the Clever People™ who like telling others to “read a book” seldom read anything, except their own social media. Thus, he could harness all the cultural power of publishing novels, marry it to the appropriate views, and build a huge following without the trouble of setting pen to paper. Of course, the libs were hooked — like blubbering salmon hoist from the Tay.

At the opposite end of the spectrum, we have Catturd. Snarky and mischievous, with a breezy approach to factual exactitude, this account has become infamous for its bitchy pro-Trump commentary and colourful memes. Catturd has also independently published a novel, Rabbitskin, which he claims has sold 30,000 copies. That’s 30,000 more than Archer’s “David Saunders” series.

It says something about us as a species that the internet, which was supposed to revolutionise our lives by opening up the world, has slowly concentrated into a few social media sites, an unapologetically political encyclopaedia and porn. Still, beyond the angry, sticky citadel, the majority populates. An unmapped web froths and pulses, breeding pungent examples of pseudonyms in action. Names like “Delicious Tacos”, “Bronze Age Pervert” and “The Last Psychiatrist” would be inexplicable to most — and, indeed, might make you sound quite mad if you mentioned them — but if you know, you know.

A year or two after the comedian Chris Langham’s conviction, a cynical television executive — a handsome woman, with high cheekbones and high boots — told me Langham would just carry on writing jokes, but under a pseudonym. That never came to pass — or we must presume it didn’t. It is in the nature of pen names that, if deployed correctly, we don’t know who is behind them.

Plenty of writers and artists have had their careers turned on their heads for rather less serious reasons, often little more than the expression of a personal opinion. Their creative impulses won’t die, even as the doors close. We are going through a period of cultural clench. Perhaps, when our Brexit-bruised buttocks finally relax, we’ll discover all sorts of people carried on working, creating, hidden behind an innocuous soubriquet.

Of course, the problem with writing under a pen name is you actually have to dream up the name. Personally, when toying with this idea, the name always generates titles — for works I think the world is better off spared. Sadly, “The Werewolf Machine” by S W Crozier, “The Cupcake Killings” by Barbara Brown and “Jackie the Stripper” by Poppy Snaps seem doomed to stay in the bottom drawer.

We are our names. Our names are us — successes, failures, detritus and all. So I’ll be sticking with my name. Or will I?