Blunt has been on the receiving end of scathing criticism and straight up snark for nearly a decade. But when he first joined Twitter, at the urging of his record label, he got a crash course in just how much people hated him. So the former soldier returned fire.

"My record label wanted me to be on it to market myself and my album," he told British publication Radio Times. "Then I went on there I saw how people could be quite abusive, not just to me but to everyone online, and I was amazed that I even considered taking it seriously.

"What happens on Twitter makes the news, you see articles about what people say on Twitter and that is a madness. And [that is] someone's opinion voiced in their bedroom, feeling confident in their bedroom, probably with their trousers round their ankles while they write five nasty words to someone and yet we give that person the time of day."