Taskmaster star Alex Horne has shared his anger at online trolls who targeted comedian Rosie Jones when she joined the show.
Jones, who has cerebral palsy, faced a flurry of online abuse earlier this year when it was announced that she would be appearing in the 18th season of the Channel 4 competition.
34-year-old Jones later quit Twitter/X in response to the abusive comments, describing the platform as a “centre of hate”.
In an interview with The Times, Horne, who created the show and also appears as the assistant to “Taskmaster” Greg Davies, described the abuse directed at Jones as “really disgusting”.
“It was unbelievable, really disgusting,” he told the newspaper.
“I don’t often feel angry, but I did about that. The last time I felt angry — when I was about 14, when we were on holiday and someone broke into our house— I remember thinking, oh, this is what anger is like.”
Jones often speaks out about the trolling she faces when she appears on TV, telling The Guardian earlier this year: “I’d be lying if I said it didn’t upset me, but luckily I am surrounded by such a strong network of brilliant friends, family, colleagues who support me.
“Do I need a thick skin? Yes, I bloody do. But I’m able to switch it off, I don’t look at social media when I’m on TV and I focus on the positives.”
Last year, Jones presented a one-off programme for Channel 4 exploring her experiences of ableist abuse, which was controversially titled Am I a R*****?
Her decision to use an ableist slur in the show’s title proved to be a divisive one, with Jones later explaining that she had chosen it in order to reclaim a word that had been “used as a weapon towards me all my life”.
“I need to say, first and foremost: it was my choice, my idea,” she said. “I really wanted to take control of it and say, ‘This is not OK’...
“I understand that some people may be offended, or will be very upset by it, but at the same time, it is unfortunately still a word that has been used every day towards me.”
