Tom Clarke of The Enemy responds to online abuse

​In a Twitter post which you can read in full here, Clarke makes some finely-tuned points regarding defining artists by physical descriptions, going on to draw parallels to critics of Adele’s weight in subsequent posts (although previously he was less tactful: “If I had a pound for everytime a journalist called me a hobbit I could buy enough bullets to round them up and disfigure the lot of them.”)

An excerpt from the post reveals he is considering leaving the industry as a consequence of the negative remarks about his appearance:

I’m undecided what to do. I adore music. I adore our fans. But nobody should be driven to the lows that this industry allows professionals to drive musicians to. Sadly I don’t expect anything to change, I don’t expect anyone to apologise, I expect few will understand, but writing this has at least been cathartic.

I appreciate the support from fans and some friends. Most say ignore the idiots and carry on doing what you love. It’s very easy to say ignore the haters, until it’s your face on the hobbit jar, and your name on the prescription.

I hope this makes at least one person think again before they insult somebody who they’ve totally forgotten is a fellow human being, no matter how weird or different they look.

Pointedly ensuring a lack of hypocrisy, he also goes on to explain his bolshy behaviour as industry pressure: “there were people in our team who actively incentivised me to have a pop.” He also makes an apology to The Horrors for mocking their hair.

It might seem a bit of an overreaction on first glance, but he makes an important point, just as Kerrang! editor James McMahon did in July when he was labelled a “paedophile” by a stand-up comic. You don’t know the underlying stories, background or life of this person - and, as McMahon and Clarke have said, if they suffer from any mental health issues - so it’s probably best to avoid the asinine jokes all together.