OHMYGOSSIP — Richard Bacon believes the youth of today would “have sympathy” with him over his past drug taking.
The TV presenter was sacked as a presenter from BBC’s ‘Blue Peter’ in 1998 after he was caught taking cocaine, but he believes the experience of being axed from the show would have been very different today in the age of social media.
Speaking to The Sun newspaper, he said: “A producer on ‘Blue Peter’ said to me, ‘You’ll never work again,’ so it did feel like being ‘cancelled’.
“Today, if I was 22 and took drugs at a party, I think I’d get some empathy and sympathy from young people.”
Richard will front a new documentary called ‘Cancelled’ on Channel 4 at 10pm tonight (02.12.21) to examine the modern social justice trend ‘cancel culture’, and touch on his own past scandal.
In the documentary, Richard, 46, will explore how social media has paved way for ‘cancel culture’, becoming a virtual platform for public shaming and toxic abuse.
His Twitter history will also be under the microscope by 21-year-old TikTok user Naomi, who unearths tweets between 2009 and 2015 she deems offensive.
In one tweet, he wrote: “That sounds gay. I’m calling the police”. Naomi said this made him “look homophobic”.
She called him out on another tweet where he used the word “slaaaaaags” because she thought this made him sounds “misogynistic”, despite the fact that it was actually a reference to a comedy term that was coined in sitcom ‘Gavin and Stacey’ and made popular.
He added: “It was an amazing exercise, it’s interesting going through your old tweets, because it makes 2014 look like a century ago. Everything has changed so fast and feels so different.
“Those two tweets in the show were about nothing. The one Naomi said was a gay slur was me deconstructing a news story and, when they’re in context, it’s obvious I’m messing around.
“But that’s the problem with Twitter conversations – if someone just takes one bit of it out of context, it can make you look really bad.”
The main reason for Richard fronting the documentary was to gain a better understanding of the online world his children are about to enter into.
He said: “Part of the reason for doing the documentary was the need to understand where the world is at, how it’s changing, and what the rules are.
“Preparing your kids to enter that is a lot more important these days than conversations about the birds and the bees.
“The potential for a teenager to wander into a public shaming is terrifying.”

Source: VacationHunter.Online