Stig's Own Shocking Experience Of Online Trolling

26 February 2017, 18:11 | Updated: 26 February 2017, 18:48

Stig Abell told his listeners that he's used to online trolls - but when they turned to his wife it was a different story.

Lily Allen quit Twitter following comments from an online troll about the stillbirth of her son.

Here Stig Abell opens up about his own experience with online trolls. 

He said: "Have we always been awful and angry and abusive as a society? Always had horrible thoughts and anger and aggression pulsing within us and it's just come out through social media?

"So social media is just the channel. It's just something that exists as a way of framing these thoughts, these feelings that have always existed? This aggression that's always been there?

"Or has social media made us worse now as a society? As a group of people than we were 10 years ago before the advent of Twitter and Facebook?

"A couple of weeks ago I was doing this show, and someone Tweeted at me. I've just been talking about my wonderful wife, but I mentioned her again, and he referred to her, he said something about me, and he referred to her as a "Nigga Ape", because I had mentioned she was mixed-race. 

"It slightly took my breath away that someone would Tweet that, or even think that. You know, I'm fairly thick-skinned, I know what I do for a living and I have opinions and I expect people to disagree with me or otherwise, and so I try not to get too bothered by things that I read on social media. 

"But I read that and I just thought 'Who would actually say that? Or think that? Or communicate that?'. Would someone have always done that or is it worse now?"