Greg James has hit out at an Instagram troll for making a “deranged” comment about his wife Bella Mackie after the death of their dog Barney.
On Tuesday (4 August), the radio presenter, 40, shared the “horrible news” that he and Mackie’s beloved chocolate labrador was put down the previous night.
James missed that day’s breakfast radio show and returned to the airwaves on Wednesday (5 August), when he shared an emotional tribute to his ”very, very lovely dog”.
Later in the week, How To Kill Your Family author Mackie, who has been married to James since 2018, took to Instagram to share a picture of herself smiling as she received the first review for her new book Claw’s Out.
While Mackie, 43, hinted at Barney’s death in the post, calling it “some very welcome good news at a very sad time”, that didn’t stop one commenter from writing that it was “too soon before your pup died”.
While her commenters leapt to defend Mackie following the “s***ty comment”, the writer herself responded with a simple: “F*** you.”
James then left his own comment, writing: “Our grief and how we deal with it is absolutely nothing to do with you. Or more simply put, what Bella just said.”
Hours before, Mackie had shared a video of herself crying days on from Barney’s death, and along with a picture of the ring she’d had engraved with his face.
Reacting to the troll’s comment in a since-expired Instagram comment, she wrote: “Gave me an odd moment of dark comedy actually so thanks for your deranged message I guess?”
A regular character on James’s radio show and his and his wife’s social media feeds, Barney was adopted by the couple from Battersea Dogs and Cats Home in 2019, one year after James began hosting the Radio 1 breakfast show.
James shared the “horrible news” of his death on Instagram on Tuesday, writing: “I can’t really get my head around it. But he was peaceful, we were with him at home in the garden in the sunshine and I can’t stop crying.”
During his first radio show back the following day, James told listeners that he didn’t “really want to talk about it too much because I will cry”.
“Love that Barney boy so much, my God,” he said. “I guess it’s the whole thing, isn’t it? The price of love is pain, and my pain and my sadness is so much, because I loved him so god damn much. He was so joyful. What a thing.”
