“I don’t know about you but whenever I read a blog I do not let my eye drop below half the screen in case I accidentally hit the bit where the comments reside. Of all the stinking, sliding, scuttling, weird, entomological creatures that inhabit the floor of the internet those comments on blogs are the most unbearable, almost beyond imagining,” he added, getting into his stride and echoing comments made by fellow comedian David Mitchell earlier this year about the standard of online commentary.

“Their resentment, their desire to be heard at the most vituperative level, at the most unpleasant and malevolent, genuinely ill-willed malevolent, level is terrifying and I am very often simply not able to cope with that,” Fry said. “Twitter is usually not like that… [but] I found that the @ mentions were just getting… I could see these comments that would just make me upset.”