Stan Collymore has deleted his Twitter account after being branded a "vile hypocrite" by ex-girlfriend Ulrika Jonsson for criticising online abuse.
The account belonging to the former England footballer, who has more than 505,000 Twitter followers, was taken offline on Thursday morning following a front-page story in the Sun.
Jonsson told the Sun: "It must be horrendous to be vilified for your beliefs, your colour or your sexuality. In no way do I agree with trolling or abuse on Twitter.
"The people that do it are pathetic cowards. But Stan is too. He is actually one of the people he's criticising."
She repeated claims that Collymore was violent to her during their relationship.
Collymore's move came as radio station TalkSport banned mentions of Twitter after accusing the site of failing to respond to racist abuse against him.
Collymore, who works as a pundit for the station, has asked Staffordshire police to investigate "horrific" racist tweets.
He claimed children as young as 10 were being "goaded" by adults into posting racist and sexist tweets.
Collymore also accused Twitter of having poor age verification procedures and of "hiding behind" claims that it is unable to comment on individual cases.
He told BBC Breakfast on Wednesday that police were "banging their heads against a brick wall" because of Twitter's policies, and accused it of being a "vacuum" in which abuse could be published.
The TalkSport chief executive, Scott Taunton, hit out at what he claimed was a "lack of response and perceived inaction by Twitter" over the issue. He announced a ban on mentrions of the site on-air and vowed to "stop promoting" its Twitter accounts in light of the row.
He said in a statement: "We are dismayed at the lack of response and perceived inaction by Twitter. Racist or abusive messages of this nature are illegal and unacceptable.
"We have more than 3 million Twitter followers across our accounts but we will not promote these until we are satisfied that Twitter is doing its utmost to prevent abuse of this nature. We have a duty of care to all our staff and presenters and until I am satisfied that Twitter is treating this seriously we will no longer promote Twitter accounts or use tweets on-air.
"It seems inconceivable that a high-tech company with a market capitalisation of $30bn appears incapable of preventing racist and abusive tweets being broadcast across its platform."
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