Minogue reports Twitter user for threats

Kylie Minogue has alerted police after receiving persistent threats on Twitter from one of her followers.

The Australian singer, 43, used the social-networking site to call her tormenter a "weirdo" and said she had contacted police, alerting more than a million followers to the harassment she was suffering.

Minogue, who refers to her fans on the site as "lovers", said: "I love 1,033,861 of you LOVERS, but 1 is not a lover, just a deluded weirdo making threats."

The incident comes after a BBC Panorama investigation drew attention to the growing problem of cyberbullying and so-called "trolling", where users write offensive messages with the intention of eliciting a reaction.

A parliamentary inquiry has called for Facebook and Twitter to be forced to sign official codes of conduct to help stop stalking.

The cross-party report called for the websites to be under a duty to help police with stalking inquiries.Last year there were at least 50,000 cases, of which around 2 per cent resulted in custodial sentences.

It is not the first time Minogue has had problems with obsessive fans. In 2002 she revealed she had been stalked by a man for five years and the following year she received more than 700 threatening letters .