The John Lewis Christmas advert is out, and the real John Lewis is bracing himself for the Twitter onslaught

A computer science educator from Virginia didn't know what he was getting himself into when he snagged the @JohnLewis username on Twitter

Which came first - John Lewis or John Lewis? (Twitter)

It's that time of year again - the John Lewis Christmas advert is out, and everyone's talking about it.

It's also around this time that John Lewis, the computer science educator from Blacksburg, Virginia, suffers a bombardment of tweets from people who have mistaken him for the shop.

Lewis joined Twitter in November 2007, in the early days of the social network. Twitter wasn't nearly as popular at the time, so he was able to snag the @JohnLewis username, not knowing what he was getting himself into.

John Lewis (the shop) joined in March 2010, and with their ideal username taken, they had to settle for @JohnLewisRetail.

This isn't the most obvious username for the shop, and John Lewis has had to face the consequences.

Lewis, who describes himself as a "computer science educator, father of four, social liberal, atheist and not a retail store," receives numerous messages every day from mistaken Twitter users asking him about discounts, making complaints, and talking about the shop's Christmas advert.

This year's advert, a heartwarming tale of a young girl cheering up a lonely man on the moon, was released this morning to a warm reception.

As it starts appearing on TV and the festive period gets closer, the wrongly-addressed tweets are only going to get more common. But Lewis is ready.

A lesser man would change his handle, set his account to private, or abandon Twitter entirely - but not Lewis.

Multiple times a day he takes it upon himself to reply and correct people mistaking him for the shop, turning himself into something of a Twitter celebrity.

He's so popular, in fact, that some people have accused him of being a fictional marketing character created by the retail giant - but could John Lewis really be that clever?