Jermaine Jenas received so much online racist abuse he had to shut down his Twitter account.
Jermaine Jenas and wife Ellie Penfold
The former England football international was working as a commentator for BBC Sport during the Euro 2020 tournament and such was the level of vile racist abuse aimed at him he reported it to the police.
Speaking to The Sun newspaper, he said: “These unregulated platforms, where people can be anonymous, have become like the black market of racism.
"I got a lot of abuse commentating during the Euros, which wasn’t nice.
“Pretty much any game I did, I was trending on Twitter afterwards — a lot of it was racial abuse, some of it just abuse for no reason.
"It got to the point — after the third game, I think — where I had to delete Twitter.
"It wasn’t a healthy place for me to be. I’m quite a laid-back person, quite relaxed and I have strong self-belief.
"But for the first time, I found myself acting a bit differently, being a lot more sensitive when people were trying to have a laugh or a joke with me.
"After the tournament, there were a couple of tweets that the police highlighted — ones that were directly racist."
'The One Show' host - who is married to Ellie Penfold with whom he shares two daughters - has teamed up with the Football Policing Unit and spent the past year researching social media racism for a new Channel 4 documentary 'Hunting The Football Trolls'.
And he's hoping the two people, from who he received the worst abuse, will receive "some form of punishment" because there needs "to be more of a deterrent" to stamp this abuse out.
Jermaine, 38, said: "So I’m currently going through the process of trying to get some form of punishment for those two people.
"The police have tracked them down, and I’ve given my statement.
“Unfortunately these things take time, so who knows if and when they will be charged.
"There does need to be more of a deterrent — be it a fine, a custodial sentence or some sort of reform, giving education and help to these people, so they can learn and change for good.”