A FORMER councillor has spoken out against a fake Twitter account which stole his photo - leading him and his family to be plagued by online trolls.

A photo of 62-year-old Nigel Addison from Droitwich was stolen and used by the parody Twitter account of Barry Stanton, a man purporting to be a proud father of five from Blackpool, last year.

In November 2017, a tweet by the so-called Barry Stanton that read “just picked my lad up from school. he tells me he was forced to read the korma in religion class. bloody outrage" went viral.

Since then, Mr Addison and his three daughters, aged between 26 and 38, have been bombarded with online messages from strangers asking if he is the man behind the account.

Mr Addison said: “I just want people to know that I’m nothing like that and it's nothing to do with me. I’m an ex-district councillor, I’ve not long completed a degree at the Open University and I'm definitely not a racist.

Barry Stanton's tweets are often sexist, racist, misogynistic, homophobic and regularly express strong opinions on immigration and Brexit, garnering thousands of retweets and replies.

“I must have got 30 messages the other night and it was just constant," added Mr Addison.

“It was just so overwhelming I could have cried. I was just thinking what the hell is going on?

“I've had total strangers ringing me up and asking if I was this Barry Stanton.

“At first I was totally unaware what was happening and I took no notice but then when it carried on and carried on, I soon realised how bad it really is.

“Not all of them are abusive, most of them just keep asking if I’m the real Barry Stanton or saying things about Brexit and whether I’ve had a can of Carling today.

“What if somebody takes it seriously? What if I was walking down the road and somebody said I was that Barry Stanton and I was the one behind all those racist things. I could be attacked.

Despite the suspension of the original Barry Stanton account, new accounts appear within minutes, several of which continue to use Mr Addison's photo.

A fake account pretending to be Mr Addison has also appeared.

“The problem is every time one of these accounts gets deleted, it’s back within minutes. It will just keep going on and on," added Mr Addison.