Stan Collymore has criticised the Sun as he returned to Twitter after suspending his account over racist abuse that he received on the site.
The former England striker, who has more than 500,000 Twitter followers, said the paper's front-page story in which his ex-girlfriend Ulrika Jonsson accused him of "hypocrisy" over the affair only served to distract from the issue of online abuse.
He said in a Google+ Hangout on sports website The Bleacher Report: "The Sun newspaper thought that dragging up a 15-year-old story this morning, which bears no relevance to being abused or threats, that that means there's essentially a justification … that because it's Stan Collymore it's OK … there is a real issue here that Twitter needs to tackle."
He added: "There are people who are using a 15-year-old story to say 'Well you did this 15 years ago, so therefore now in 2014, not 1998, you don't deserve to be speaking out about someone writing in a box "I am going to turn up to your house and murder you".'"
Collymore also traded angry words with a BBC News Channel presenter who accused him on Thursday morning of having been "on the wrong side of the law".
He replied: "I've never been convicted of anything other than speeding, so maybe you'd like to retract that."
The ex-footballer added: "Regardless of what the perception of me as a character is, I have the right to be able to walk down the road and if someone calls me the N word to be able to report it and get it to dealt with. I would expect that I should be accorded the same courtesy on Twitter."
Collymore retweeted both supportive messages and abuse on Thursday afternoon, including a tweet referring to him as a "northern jungle bunny".
He added: "I'm going to furnish twitter with ideas to enhance the service (as i've been asked to do by twitter before) Any ideas welcome!"
"Tech people. Can you please tweet me potential solutions to help twitter police itself rather than law enforcement? All ears!"
Collymore claimed: "I have 1 troll in particular. Opens account, send 3/4 abusive or illegal messages, deletes account. Over 700 accounts opened in 3 years."
The ex-footballer had earlier suspended his account after asking the police to investigate "horrific" racist abuse, including death threats.
Radio station TalkSport banned mentions of Twitter on Wednesday after accusing the site of failing to respond to racist abuse against Collymore, who is one of its pundits.
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