James Martin leaves fans ‘devastated’ with shock social media announcement

James Martin has left fans ‘devastated’ after making a shock announcement on social media.

James Martin took to his Twitter account yesterday afternoon to announce to his fans that he will be quitting social media ‘for the foreseeable future’, after he was targeted by online trolls who subjected him to abusive comments online.

It came after the TV chef launched his virtual cooking class Dine In With James Martin on Saturday, which saw him guide viewers through cooking a three-course meal, but was hit with a bunch of technical issues that were out of his hands.

Opening up about the negative response that he was met with, James wrote on his Twitter account, ‘Having seen some of the comments posted online regarding last night’s cook along and the anger towards me given the technical issues that the production team were having, I would like to apologise again for this and I will be chasing up with Live Nation, the production company IT team and all the people they hired, to find out the problem.

‘Having said that, this is small comfort to some of you online who are quite rightly angry at me,’ continued James. ‘I promise I will be speaking to them tomorrow, I wasn’t involved in the IT side of things and know little about it but I will get all the issues raised and sorted as much as I possibly can immediately.

‘It’s unfortunate they didn’t use my team that makes the Saturday show to do this but, as you can imagine, it was all out of my hands,’ he went on, before explaining his decision to quit Twitter for the timebeing.

Why did James Martin quit social media?

Explaining to his fans why he is quitting Twitter, James Martin wrote,‘To the rest of you who had a good night, thank you but due to the large amount of vile comments posted directly towards me, this will be my last post as I will be taking a break from posting personally and all social media for the foreseeable future’.

Fans were left shock and saddened at the This Morning star (opens in new tab)’s decision, with one commenting on James’ Twitter announcement, ‘Such a shame James, your loyal followers will be devastated but I can honestly say I don’t blame you.’

Another wrote, ‘I feel very saddened and impacted by the anger directed at you personally James and by your fans is very hurtful,’ while one added, ‘I'm sorry to hear this James! Some people are awful. Hope you don't let it get to you! Love your cook alongs! Technical issues happen to all of us!’.

Others commented, ‘That's terrible and so unnecessary. There really are some horrible people - but they are in the minority’, ‘I think it's sad you've made this decision with the minority spoiling it for the majority of us who enjoy your tweets. Please don't let them win!’, ‘I missed the show, but I think it’s awful that you are getting so much flak’ and ‘Sorry to read this, don't let the vile keyboard warriors win’.