Take That sweet Tweet by Gary Barlow

Singer and ITV talent judge Gary Barlow gives a sweetshop some added X Factor by tweeting its virtues on Twitter.

The endorsement nearly sent the online sweetshop into meltdown after telling almost a million fans they should check it out. Over 15,000 people logged on to the website of A Quarter Of within seconds of the X Factor judge tweeting about them last Friday.

The company, based in Blackburn, Lancs, were already busy dealing with Christmas orders when they were deluged with requests from the singer’s followers for old school sweets.

Site founder Michael Parker, said: “We had no idea what was going on. There was a sudden massive flood of orders, which on top of the Christmas orders put a real strain on operations.

“But we’ve got great technology and a great team, so we just got our heads down and just ploughed on until we got everything done. It was a great day, we’d like to thank Gary personally.”

Take That star Gary, 40, whose Twitter name is @GBarlowOfficial, made the tweet from his ipad last Friday afternoon, while preparing for the X Factor live final, which his act, Marcus, came second.

He told his 972,000 followers: “Check This Bag Of Goodies Out www.AQuarterOf.co.uk”

Within minutes fans were replying with messages about orders they had placed. Other celebrity fans include Nigella Lawson, who recently featured them on her website.