Greg James has issued an apology after being called out for ‘ableism’ on social media.
The BBC Radio 1 DJ and his co-star Chris Smith were revealed today as two of 13 authors commissioned to write new stories based on Roald Dahl’s much-loved fictional characters.
Greg and Chris have penned a follow-up to the hugely popular novel The Twits, originally published in 1980.
Their announcement video saw the pair ask the illustrator of their new book, Emily Jones, to give a character a glass eye to make her ‘more disgusting’.
In a since-deleted promotional video for the novel, Greg and Chris helped their illustrator put the finishing touches on the characters.
When asked by Emily what they thought, Chris said: ‘So nearly there! She needs to be more revolting,’ to which Greg emphasised: ‘Really gross.’
‘What about a glass eye?’, asked Emily, to which Chris excitedly said: ‘She needs a glass eye, that’s it! What a disgusting pair of Twits.’
In the original story, Mrs Twit was very memorable glass eye wearer. She was not always wearing it, though, and used it to play pranks on Mr Twit, such as the time she put it in his beer glass to frighten him.
Following the release of Greg and Chris’s video, they received a flurry of angry messages from fans, branding the remarks ‘disgusting’.
Taking to X later today, Greg and Chris released a heartfelt statement addressing the backlash.
‘We are so sorry to have caused offence with the launch video,’ the message began. ‘It was absolutely not our intention. And we apologise unreservedly. It’s now gone.’
Having deleted the original video, they continued: ‘We understand that words matter and we pride ourselves on championing and welcoming everyone into the magical world of children’s books.
‘We would never dream of deliberately setting out to exclude anyone.
‘With the glass eye comment, we were attempting to pay homage to one of the Twit’s most famous pranks involving a glass of beer in order to remind people of Dahl’s infamous terrible two.
‘It’s in no way a suggestion that this forms any part of the plot of the new story nor was it our intention to suggest that it was in any way disgusting.’
Their statement added that ‘it’s unfortunate that the word disgusting appears to be a direct comment on that.’
‘That’s an error on our part,’ they admitted.
‘We are devastated that it’s come across like this but completely understand why there is anger. And we appreciate everyone rightly calling it out.
‘We hear that fully, we’re so upset that we made a mistake but we’re still incredibly proud of this book and we’re excited to get out there and share it with young readers all over the world x’
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