On this fourth #EdBallsDay, has the hype become too much?

It’s been four years and more than 38,000 retweets since the shadow chancellor accidentally tweeted his own name – and 28 April became the semi-official Ed Balls Day.

The original tweet, from 2011, has been favourited more than 18,000 times and is set to get hundreds more retweets in the coming hours.

“I’ve no idea what to make of it,” Balls told the New Statesman in March. “It’s obviously helped by the fact that I have a memorable name.

“The trouble with the day itself is that there is a dilemma. There’s one group of people who think if I don’t engage somehow on the day, I’m a bad sport. And if I do engage, there’ll be another whole group of people who’ll say: ‘Oh, God, he’s ruined it’. I can’t win and I sort of know that, so I don’t really mind.”

But there was an upside, he added: “Who in postwar British politics has had a day named after them? You take what you can, really, don’t you?”

In previous years, Balls has acknowledged the Ed Balls Day celebration, albeit grudgingly.

In 2013, even the shadow home secretary Yvette Cooper, who is married to Balls, retweeted the slip-up.

So will Balls be taking part this year, from the campaign trail?

By early Tuesday morning, new spoofs were already circulating.

But the hype of Ed Balls Day has been somewhat tempered this year by complaints that the day itself has become too mainstream.