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Holly Willoughby (pictured), the television presenter, has disclosed that she is dyslexic after fans criticised her spelling on Twitter.
Willoughby, 28, who co hosts This Morning, made the confession on the social networking site after followers sent messages to her attacking a previously misspelt post.
Her fans mocked the blonde star's spelling with a barrage of private messages when she posted: "Morning, today we're talking, teenage peregnancies! 'How to be famouse' with Pete Waterman and Sara Payne is talking about victim support. x"
This prompted Willoughby to hit back, writing: "Thankyou for flagging up my spelling, I am dyslexic, and don't have time to spell check everything, you may just have to overlook it..."
Willoughby took over as the presenter of This Morning when she replaced Fern Britton as Phillip Schofield's female co-host in September this year.
Earlier this year, TV chef Jamie Oliver branded a fan on Twitter an "idiot" for nitpicking at his spelling.
A poster called "funditfrog" pointed out four mistakes in one of the 33-year-old's messages, adding: "You're influencing kids, you owe it them to be correct."
But Oliver replied: "Get lost you idiot im dislexic and i cant spell so stick that in your pipe! its better than being smug."
Other openly dyslexic stars include actors Tom Cruise and Orlando Bloom as well as England footballer Rio Ferdinand.
Beth Haller, Ph.D., is Co-Director of the Global Alliance for Disability in Media and Entertainment (www.gadim.org). A former print journalist, she is a member of the Advisory Board for the National Center on Disability and Journalism (https://ncdj.org/). Haller is Professor Emerita in the Department of Mass Communication at Towson University in Maryland, USA. Haller is co-editor of the 2020 "Routledge Companion to Disability and Media" (with Gerard Goggin of University of Sydney & Katie Ellis of Curtin University, Australia). She is author of "Representing Disability in an Ableist World: Essays on Mass Media" (Advocado Press, 2010) and the author/editor of Byline of Hope: Collected Newspaper and Magazine Writing of Helen Keller (Advocado Press, 2015). She has been researching disability representation in mass media for 30+ years. She is adjunct faculty in the Disability Studies programs at the City University of New York (CUNY) and the University of Texas-Arlington.
From The Telegraph in the UK:
