What a Difference a Day Makes - Barrowman Finds a Knight To Bear His Standard and Slay Neil Patrick Harris

Who's this now?

Well, this is an interesting twist.

Yesterday, we mentioned that Neil Patrick Harris had taken to his Twitter with a low-key appeal for votes in Man of the Decade, and had mounted what seemed to be a huge lead. Even once John Barrowman engaged via his own Twitter, we though maybe the 42x multiple NPH had in followers might make the race over.

Enter Jonathan Ross, riding on a white stallion, to aid his friend John Barrowman. Jonathan is, for lack of a better comparison for our U.S. readers, a sort of Jay Leno in the UK, except people don't seem to hate him. In fact they love him so much, he's got about 500,000 followers on Twitter. So when he put the story out there that Barrowman was going down to NPH, things took on a life of their own.

Twitter can no longer count the number of times this has been retweeted. I searched, it failed.

Mr. Ross also decided to sign up for an account here at AfterElton.com to leave his vote and support for John in the comments.

That does look like an endorsement.

At which point somebody told Barrowman that a Twitteratti had decided to broaden his reach, because he threw down the gauntlet to NPH.

Something is getting bigger in the battle for the top.

Proving what a multi-talented performer he is, he then went onstage while people flocked to his standard.

Yeah, I'm going to run with this knight's tournament metaphor.

Judging by his tweets, which are now coming fast and steady, he's loving the power of Twitter all of a sudden. He's using from his couch at home, with his ever-present dogs, a Transformers shirt, and some very sexy artwork on the wall.

He's even cute without makeup.

At this point, there's been no reply from NPH - his Twitter has been silent. But given that Jonathan Ross has him outnumbered by a factor of four, the way I see it he has two options. He can 1) Move a shampoo bottle;

I'm really hoping he takes option #1

or 2) he can appeal to his buddy Felicia Day, who got him hooked on Twitter in the first place. She's big-time, with 1.6 million followers who do her bidding. This is the less interesting option to my dirty little mind, since if NPH moves hair product, John can always counter with things like this:

The boss' problem with Barrowman's naked man is he actually appears naked in the pics. We're PG-13.

Honestly, we're all winners here, regardless of who comes out on top. Our editor, Michael Jensen (also known as Head Chimp In Charge), has interviewed both Neil Patrick Harris and John Barrowman, and they're both stunning role models for our community. They have shaped pop culture, promoted causes, and advanced visibility in untold ways.

Only the Head Chimp In Charge knows how the voting is running, but he's not telling, even after I soaked his evening bananas in rum. You've got until midnight Sunday to pick your man.

Enter the X Factor.

Update: The ever versatile NPH took option three, which I hadn't anticipated. His Dr. Horrible Sing-A-Long Blog costar, Nathan Fillion, is also a member of the Twitter elite, with nearly 424k followers that rally to his call. He's taken it a step further, trying to carve out a whole century for NPH.

Sorry, Captain Hammer, we're only voting for the Man of the Decade right now.

This whole thing has gotten way bigger than I anticipated. Which celebrity picks a side next? Barrowman fans are imploring David Tennant and Catherine Tate to rally for John. Will one of them come to his aid? And who can put one man firmly in control?

Look who just got here!

Update #2: Well, I guess that answers that question. Felicia Day, NPH's costar in the Dr. Horrible Sing-A-Long Blog started by retweeting Nathan Fillion's campaign tweet. Then she added her own personal tweet to her 1.6 million followers.

Who knew this poll was actually "hot"?

But will her fans flock to Neil on command? That remains to be seen.

And the Hot Nerd Brigade has joined the battle.

Update #3: Well, that didn't take long. My favorite hot nerd comedian, Chris Hardwick, has decided to pick a side. You may recognize Chris from Attack of the Show, or as the host of Web Soup, or a frequent member of the panel on Chelsea Lately. He's everywhere. And he's also in NPH's corner.

It looks like Neil has always been a perfect gentleman around Chris. Pity.

He's funny (search for a clip of him talking about Abercrombie & Fitch), but can he scare up the votes?

Who's the Boss? She's the boss, and she orders you to vote.

Update #4:I didn't see this one coming. I don't even know the connection, and I've been looking over IMDB to figure it out. But responding to a call to action from Nathan, our favorite Charmed One has come out in support of Doogie Howser.

I like that she still retweets old school.

We'll see if she's still bewitching enough command her 550k followers in her name.

Who knew SyFy was into Beyonce?

Well, this whole thing is now a story on SyFy. They claim to be on George Takei's side, but they did choose a still from Barrowman doing "Single Ladies" which was the most popular song of the year, but on the other hand, it makes me want to pull my hair out. So I don't know if they're trying to help him, or hurt him.

Their choice of wording in their tweet was...unique.

It's not from the man himself, but the Whedonverse is a loyal bunch.

Well, it's not a direct endorsement from Joss Whedon himself, but the extremely active and loyal board of his loyalists has made an endorsement. Not suprisingly, it went to NPH, since Joss and NPH have quite a history together. And the fact that Whedonesque only has 16k Twitter followers is immaterial, the boards are the power, and it's made it there.

Each tweet chooses their own phrasing.

Still, the massed power of the Whedon faithful hasn't been able to force networks to keep some of my favorite shows of all time on the air - can they really drive NPH to victory?

I really wanted a picture of him with his beautiful dog, but it's late, and I'm sleepy.

Neil Gaiman is a master of fantasy worlds. He's written some truly creepy and wonderful books that I adore, like MirrorMask, Anansi Boys, and American Gods. I'll also forever be in his debt for introducing me to Terry Pratchett with Good Omens, who remains an author I buy on release day. Many first got to know his work through the delightfully trippy Coraline movie this past summer.

Neil is delightful friends with people like Wil Wheaton, who holds a close connection to Chris Hardwick, who was one of the first to endorse NPH, above. So I was a little surprised to see him choose country first, and call for his 1.4 million followers to vote John Barrowman. For Queen and country, I suppose. You decide if I'm talking about the queen in Buckingham.

For Neil, it must be like choosing parents was for Coraline.

I wonder how all this will stand when I wake up?

Well, both scary and beautiful.

Edit that: I couldn't get to bed before needing to update again. We have another witch coming in for NPH - he really seems to have a corner on the magical powers set, doesn't he? It can't hurt that they star in The Barney Stinson Show, err, How I Met Your Mother together, I guess.

The new mother tosses her 71k followers into the ring for NPH. Something I never realized until I saw the tweet though - she's got one of those unique voices/cadences that I instantly read the tweet in her voice, inflection and all.

How appropriate, since mothership Logo has been marathoning Buffy.

I woould never, ever, want to make Willow angry. For that matter, Lily's proven to have a diabolical streak, too.

Now the Brits are mostly sleeping, so adding these monster-following American celebrities may not decided anything once dawn breaks over Cardiff. Stay tuned!And if you haven't already voted, do so now!

Morning Update: YAWN! Well, I finally crawled out from under the electric blanket, and took a look around. I don't see any new celebrities joining the battle, though Jonathan Ross is going back and making sure his legions of followers saw the orders. And boy, do they seem to be responding. Jonathan Ross seems almost like a cult leader!

Looks like he's asking for a thrust.

The boss won't let me peek at the results, so I have no idea what happened overnight in the actual voting. But with much of the U.S. still sleeping off their Saturday hangovers, I can tell you that my real-time Twitter searches say that activity, as of 10am EST, running 3:1 in favor of Barrowman. No idea if that can hold as the day progresses.

What's amazing me is the lobbying some of you are trying, reaching out to huge celebrities and trying to sway the race. Ellen DeGeneres, Tyra Banks, Jimmy Fallon, Ryan Seacrest and Stephen Colbert are just a few of the names I see appeals being made to. A few of those could be a game changer, with millions of followers. So far no one seems to have gone after the King of Twitter, Ashton Kutcher, but I don't know a connection from Ashton to either candidate.

If I've missed a celeb that has actively joined the battle, please let me know via PM, or at least the comments - I can't check everyone. And I fear I might miss someone in the UK just because I'm not familiar. 

A nice man and his gorgeous dog play in the snow.

Update: Remember to be nice folks! Last night, Neil Gaiman came out in support of John Barrowman, surprising some, since he has ties to both men. Mr. Gaiman has since had to defend that decision, remind his 1.4 million passionate followers that Barrowman asked first.

Play nice! Neil is.

One thing I've always enjoyed about following Neil Gaiman is his use of hashtags to create a trend. He has one for when his tweeting about something crashes a website from the traffic. That's not likely to happen to us, but he does seem to be endorsing adding #biggaybattle to your tweets on the subject. It's less specific than the also running #votebarrowman, but more likely to actually trend.

Plus it makes me giggle.

Those eyes. That lanky build. This could be my future ex-husband. Straight? Darn!

Update Sunday 8pm EST: Thanks to reader Nick, we have discovered that Vernon Kay, BBC Radio 1 DJ, and judging by his website, American football fan, has come out for queen and country in support of Barrowman.I don't know a lot about Vernon, but frankly, I think I'd like to.

I don't know if the the guy who talking him into it is crazy about Capt Jack, or still made about CoE.

Vernon brings with him his charm, the twinkle in his eyes, and aboout 120k followers. And a specially designed URL ending in "votejb" that's new. Brits are getting serious.

I always felt PC Andy played for our team.

Also tossing their support behind the saucy Scot are Tom Price, who Torchwood viewers will know best as PC Andy. He brings his 1800 followers and a charm I always found adorable. Oh, and for those of you who seem dog-obsessed, his Twitter picture is him and his pooch.

There are limited photos of Paul available.

Paul Cornell is the wildly successful author of several of the new Dr. Who books and is widely credited with reviving interest in the franchise. What I can find out about him says he's also working on a Fantastic Four comics revival, which is great, because that franchise deserves better than the two recent movies gave it. He adds 5,500 followers to the quest to do his bidding and vote for Barrowman.

Who knew Hardwick was devious? Snarky, yes, devious, that's new.

OK, first I'd like to complain about these inconsiderate Hollywood types who don't let an east coast blogger sleep. It's my bedtime, and they pick now to get interesting? After dominating Saturday night's conversation, the NPH supports had gone fairly quiet today. Now they're awake, and sneaky.

Was this their strategy all along?

So they were just lulling the Brits into a false sense of security? Sneaky! And now they have the fancy custom URL, too. I miss seeing my name under famous rich people's pens, embedded in the long URL. *sigh*

NPH was evidently indisposed during all the hoopla. 

And finally, a word from the other man involved in this contest. Evidently completely unaware of the chaos he threw the entire intertoobs into, NPH has come back from being fabulous and famous, and probably rescuing a kitten or something. And he noticed that millions globally had been called into combat in his name.

He's keeping in the spirit of the whole thing.

The fact that he made it slightly dirty made me love him a bit more. That was worthy of Barrowman, actually. This may come down to the wire.

And with this, a blogger goes to bed, knowing that sometime before the alarm, Britain will awaken to start it up fresh.