Halfwit trolls targeting Mary Portas show we need to talk about hate on the internet

Mary Portas, retail guru and TV’s formidable Queen of Shops, made a chance remark during an interview last week. She had acquired her third child, she informed  Jamie Laing of the Great Company podcast, using sperm donated by her brother, Lawrence. The baby was carried by her then-wife, fashion journalist Melanie Rickey, and born in 2012.

Cue internet eruption, venomous hurlings of “Incest!”, “Freakery!” and “Weird!” and a surge in anti-Portas invective out of all proportion to what was not even news. In which festering cesspools had the haters and trolls been napping? Because Mary had written about all that in her 2015 autobiography Shop Girl, serialised in a national newspaper. Her former wife had also given interviews about it.

There was no biological link between Mary’s ex-wife and Mary’s brother. Mary had parented two children with her former husband. Melanie wanted one of her own for balance. Mary chose her brother as a donor to create a genetic link to her own side of the family. She did not carry or give birth to her brother’s child.

The child, Horatio, is now 13. He has always known the circumstances and enjoys a close relationship with his biological father. Can the same be said of the millions of babies conceived every year via IVF using donated sperm, eggs or embryos, or through surrogacy? Why are the haters so outraged?

Could it be that they failed to read, hear or absorb the information adequately, leapt to erroneous conclusions and seized the opportunity to unleash condemnation of an individual whose life choices fail to chime with their own?

I was asked by a friend last weekend whether I had “recovered” from the furious global backlash to publication of my latest book Love, Freddie – revealing that Queen’s late frontman Freddie Mercury had been a dad. My source? His own handwritten notebooks.

I have read outrageous lies about myself and the singer’s daughter on the internet, including that Elton John sued me after I wrote a book about him – I have never written a book about Elton, nor have I ever been sued – and that his daughter’s “witch” of a mother “stole” Freddie’s sperm and artificially inseminated herself. The internet being unregulated, people say whatever they like. Gullible folk believe their lies. Bottom line, it is all about hatred.

The Bondi Beach, Sydney atrocity was not about religion or ideology. It too was about hatred. The resurgence of violence, vandalism, harassment and murder of Jews has been rising unchecked for years. It is fuelled by the shocking prevalence of antisemitic materials online.

While the internet has delivered benefits, it has also revived ancient hostilities, spreading hate speech and conspiracy theories on an unprecedented scale. It is a major factor in the rise of modern antisemitism.

No single entity owns it. The vast network of interconnected outlets, service providers, tech giants, governments and private users is out of control. Huge corporations – the Amazons, Googles and Metas – must urgently review their structure and accessibility.

But what can we change? Mere mortals can only look inwards. We cannot blithely blame the internet when the underlying, eternal problem is the human heart.