A football fan who said he hoped TV pundit Eni Aluko was ‘in hiding in the Gaza Strip’ after fleeing abroad because of online hate has said he ‘regrets’ the outburst – and admits his own son has labeled him a ‘troll’.

The man, a Chelsea fan in his 60s, appears anonymously on the BBC podcast Why do you hate me?told journalist Marianna Spring that he “got sucked in” and admits that he wouldn’t dare write such things with his real identity.

In the 28-minute podcast released last week, the reporter meets the troll, who uses the name James on air, in person at an undisclosed address to confront him about his attacks on the former England footballer.

Aluko, 37, revealed in January that attacks on X, formerly Twitter, by ex-footballer Joey Barton and dozens of others had caused her to escape abroad.

She told fans at the time: ‘I’ve been really scared this week. I only left home on Friday and am now abroad. Because it’s really important to say that online abuse has a direct impact on your safety and how you feel and how safe you feel in real life.”

During the BBC podcast, reporter Spring reveals that James, who used to live in London, has agreed to meet her in a car park near where he works before the pair drive to a nearby farm.

The troll, who is married with children, describes ‘football as my life’ and said he would ‘miss weddings’ when he was younger to watch Chelsea – but describes himself as ‘easy going’.

He told Spring that he started using social media during the lockdown to join the conversation about football.

Listeners are told that his content is sometimes racist and critical of women, and he tells them: ‘We men don’t really want women to be involved in men’s football. It just ruins the event, they have their own game, stick to it.”

One of the tweets James posted read: “If Alex Scott and Eni Aluko were white there is no way they would be on TV.”

Another message, posted in October when Israel retaliated against Palestine with heavy bombing, read: “Let’s hope Eni Aluko is hiding in the GAZASTRIP.”

When challenged as to why he wrote it, he tells the podcast: “No idea, I got sucked into it I guess” before saying: “It’s not nice, I shouldn’t have said it.” I think it’s quite funny. It’s not’.

He said he regretted the comments and “I won’t do it again,” but added: “It’s ironic, it’s a bit of a niggling thing for people to respond to.”

Spring tells listeners that he hasn’t posted about Aluko since their conversation, but has continued to post about other female experts.

Last week, Aluko spoke about the abuse she has suffered online and believes X – formerly known as Twitter – should do more to tackle ‘hate’.

‘This is a social issue for which we have a platform [X] That gives people the opportunity to spew out their hatred unchecked,” Aluko told the BBC.

“And besides, I think the idea is to make money and stir up more hate to promote a podcast.”

Aluko also claimed that trolls want to make women and black people in sports feel “inferior” and wait to see them make a mistake to fuel their agenda.

“It’s an attempt to really project inferiority onto women and onto black people. Because it’s not just specific to football, right? This is a common experience,” Aluko said.

“You may have a black woman in a position of power and influence. As soon as she does something wrong, it confirms that she was never meant to be there.”

By David Southwell for Daily Mail Australia

Published: 00:26 EST, January 20, 2024 | Updated: 02:07 EST, January 20, 2024

‘Crazy plane lady’ Tiffany Gomas has revealed details of the argument that led to her meltdown on board an American Airlines flight that went viral in July.

Gomas was filmed shouting that that motherfucker isn’t really there before being escorted off the American Airlines flight from Fort Worth to Orlando, Florida.

The Dallas marketing executive explained the background to the incident on the Pardon My Take podcast, claiming she got involved in a “minor altercation” with another passenger and “things got out of hand.”

‘It wasn’t my best moment… it was actually a terrible moment. Absolutely humiliating. How terribly frightening,” she added.

She previously explained that she wasn’t willing to talk about the issue, saying, “The reason I probably haven’t figured it out yet is because it’s so cringe.”

When asked why she said the now infamous words, which led viewers to believe she had seen a ghost or alien, she simply said, “I literally saw nothing… It was an expression of speech.”

Instead, the comment was directed at the man she had been arguing with, the 38-year-old explained.

“They make me look bat… and since I did that, I looked absolutely crazy, but no, I was in my feelings, had to get that out, I was very upset. Not a good look,” she told the podcast.

Gomas would not comment on the cause of the argument, or whether it had been resolved simply by speaking out she had given up her aisle seat because “as you heard me say, I’m only 5-2, with my little cocky voice.”

“There was some really bad energy and I don’t want to go into all the details… as you know, it continues,” she added.

The viral sensation said she hoped the viral Delta diarrhea video that went viral in September would distract from her own in-flight incident.

Gomas also said she felt unable to leave her home for four weeks after the incident hit social media.

“There’s no playbook for going viral, I’m just a normal person, contrary to what people think, and after this all went viral, my life changed,” she explained.

Gomas said she’s also learning to have a sense of humor about her viral moment.

“I couldn’t laugh about it for a long time,” she said, “It’s funny now that time has passed.”

The July 2 viral incident occurred on Flight 1009 from Fort Worth to Orlando, Florida. Official documents say she was unwilling to leave the plane and had to be removed by American Airlines staff after the outburst, as noted by a journalist on Substack and first reported by the New York Post.

The police document states: ‘The woman then began claiming that the plane was not safe and did not want the plane to take off as she believed it would not reach its destination.

‘Because of the statements, the flight attendants felt that the aircraft needed to be rescreened. [The airline manager] explained that the passenger was denied access to the aircraft and that they wanted to escort her to the public side.’

Passengers on the plane had to leave the plane as a precaution and were screened again by security.

“TSA personnel arrived on scene to conduct a full re-screening of the aircraft,” the police report said.

Gomas was eventually escorted to the non-secure area of ​​the airport, but then attempted to return several times through TSA screening, the report said.

But when officers from the Dallas-Fort Worth Department of Public Safety arrived, an “extremely distraught” Gomas refused to talk to them and tried to get back on the plane.

Police then followed her to the curb of a terminal, where she waited for an Uber.

Gomas was given a ticket for a criminal trespass, but refused to sign it. She was never arrested.

The marketing executive was considered a “rising star” in 2017 when she served as Vice President of Client Services at Elevate Brand Marketing.

She graduated from Oklahoma State University and lives in a $2 million home in the Lakewood neighborhood, according to public records.

Gomes is the founder of a Dallas marketing company, Uppercut Marketing.

I first thought something was up when I saw that a certain member of the cabinet had miraculously changed his appearance. He had gotten a new jawline. His neck came out of his collar effortlessly. When he rose from his chair at the Cabinet table, that chair no longer tried to hang longingly about his hips.

I understood! He had fallen off, stones and stones from belly and dewlap; and I immediately thought of Julius Caesar, and his preference for well-fed colleagues.

“Let me have men around me who are fat,” said the Roman dictator shortly before his assassination. “Yond Cassius looks thin and hungry.”

It turned out that Caesar was rightly concerned about Cassius. Then I saw another colleague whose silhouette visibly shrunk; and another. By then my spider senses were ringing.

If an otherwise healthy middle-aged man exhibits sudden weight loss, I reasoned, there are only two possible explanations. Either he’s fallen hopelessly in love, or he’s about to make a Tory leadership attempt.

Then one of those colleagues stepped forward and whispered the truth – that there was an entirely different explanation. He had access, he said, to a panacea. “You don’t want to eat any more of it,” he said. Real? I stunned.

“Look at me,” he said, triumphantly wagging his braces. He was right: there was much less of him than I remembered—so much less, in fact, that he almost looked emaciated by comparison. Suddenly I was interested.

I went looking for the hero in me – the one who was three stones lighter. I would find that slim and dynamic version of Johnson, who had been trapped for decades in pointless extra body weight, and I would set him free.

Tell me how, I said; and so my friend shared the number of a brilliant doctor who prescribed this magic potion. “Are you sure it works?” I said. He waved his braces again. There was no discussion. It was a miracle.

I consulted the doctor and he told me that I was an ideal candidate for these appetite suppressant drugs. It works like this, he said: When you’ve eaten, your body produces a hormone that tells your hypothalamus (at the base of the brain) that you’re full; so you stop eating.

The problem is that this natural hormone only circulates for a few minutes, and before you know it you’ll be chewing again. So scientists have been searching for decades for the exact molecule that will tell you to stop being so damn hungry: the satiety molecule.

In the 1990s, they thought they’d cracked it when they extracted a hormone from the digestive system of the Gila monster — a giant black-and-orange lizard from Mexico.

They took this hormone, gave it to humans and somehow fooled the human digestive system by slowing down the metabolism.

Their stomachs began to think they belonged to Gila monsters and started digesting things with reptilian slowness. People weren’t so hungry anymore, and as far as I know they just sat there motionless, blinking their eyes now and then and sticking their tongues out at flies. It was a great breakthrough – and a campaign is underway to bring the Nobel Prize to the scientists involved.

But the Gila monster hormone was still too short-lived; it didn’t last long enough in the system to defeat human greed. So scientists in Denmark (with some help from Oxford) started looking harder and harder for the knockout satiety hormone, a hormone that suppresses your appetite for an entire week.

It was a huge effort that took six or seven years – until bingo, they got it. The hormone is called semaglutide and the drug’s proper name is Ozempic.

It’s easy, the doctor said. All you need to do is inject a small dose of clear Ozempic liquid into your belly once a week, and voilà—no more raiding the fridge at 11:30 p.m. for the cheddar and chorizo ​​washed down with half a bottle of wine.

Say goodbye to that invincible morning craving for a bacon sandwich. No longer will you be standing over the kids waiting for them to push aside their bowls of pasta – then relentlessly mocking what they’ve got left.

After 40 years of moral failure, 40 years of weakness in the face of temptation – of akrasia – I would acquire a new and invincible chemical willpower. I would become an ex-glutton, a person of moderation, grace, and restraint, and like my cabinet colleagues, I would begin to resemble a chiseled whippet.

He wrote out the prescription, I zoomed in on the pharmacy; and while I was honestly a little surprised by the cost, who cares, I told myself, think about the health benefits.

So for weeks I stabbed my stomach, and for weeks it worked. Effortlessly I pushed aside the pudding and the second portion. Wasn’t it amazing, I told myself, how little food you really need.

I must have lost four or five pounds a week – maybe more – when things started to go wrong all of a sudden. I’m not exactly sure why. Maybe it had something to do with constantly flying around the world and changing time zones, but I started to dread the injections because they made me sick.

One minute everything would be fine, and the next I’d be talking to Ralph on the big white phone; and I’m afraid I decided I couldn’t go on.

For now, I’m back to exercise and willpower, but I’m watching my peers—leaner but not hungrier—and hoping that if science can do it for them, maybe it can help me and everyone else one day.

I believe we are still in the foothills of what these drugs can do. They can be transformative. I spoke to Mads Thomsen, the brilliant Dane who led the search for semaglutide, and he described how these drugs will eventually be much cheaper and taken orally. He described how people can take them on a daily basis, like statins, and radically improve their health – and I think he’s right.

The obesity crisis in this country is dire: more than three quarters of the elderly are overweight or obese – and the numbers are dire among the children.

Yes, the drugs will cost a bit at first, but those who can afford it must pay; and think of the savings for the NHS in diabetes, cancer and cardiovascular disease. We perform horribly invasive and destructive surgeries and treatments – all because people couldn’t control their appetites. Why don’t you help them?

I agree with the basic conservative instinct – that we should rely on old-fashioned human determination to keep that refrigerator door closed. We should all move more. But in the end it may not be enough.

I see nothing morally wrong in using these drugs to help you lose weight, any more than it is wrong to use an electrically assisted bicycle to get up the hill. Even for us fatties, it turns out, there is such a thing as satiety – and science has found it.