Who Is Alex Belfield?

Who is the BBC presenter accused on twitter

Jeremy Vine has agreed a financial settlement with a Twitter user who falsely identified him as the BBC presenter at the centre of the Huw Edwards scandal. Vine, who presents a weekday lunchtime programme on BBC Radio 2, was one of several BBC presenters, including Gary Lineker, Rylan Clark and Nicky Campbell, who were forced to deny claims on social media that they were the then-unnamed TV star facing the allegations.

Who is Alex the voice of reason

Alex Belfield: The Voice Of Reason at The Pavilion Theatre Glasgow, Glasgow City Centre Sorry you are too late, this event has been and gone! After 25 years in broadcasting & touring LIVE, Alex Belfield found himself in Lockdown. It was then that he launched ‘The Voice Of Reason’ on YouTube from his mother’s back bedroom.

• A year on, he’s had 236 MILLION hits and is now the UK’s #1 News talk presenter, commentator, troublemaker & comedian online.
• Having never done a proper job (and being permanently self-unemployed) – Alex is bringing his LIVE nonsense to theatres across the UK.
• Characters Vordernorks, Abbottcus & Johnstone are in negotiations to appear.

Laughing in the face of lefties – Alex brings old-school cabaret back to the stage. Halfwits, fart heads & the hard of thinking are requested to stay away! This is entertainment for grown-ups who love to laugh. not precious woke flakes who want to be offended.

No refunds – no matter how many times you boo hoo on Twitter! 28th September 2023 – 29th September 2023 Relive some of the greatest songs of all time from artists such as Donna Summer, Gloria Gaynor, Earth, Wind & Fire, Sister Sledge and Chic when Lost In Music comes to the Pavilion Theatre Glasgow! 25th October 2023 – 28th October 2023 Meet middle-aged homeless alcoholic woman, Myra McLaughlin, living rough on the streets of Dublin.

Hilarious, harrowing, heartbreaking. You’ll laugh with her, cry with her, but won’t forget her! 26th February 2024 – 2nd March 2024 Written by celebrated playwright, David Ireland, Cyprus Avenue is an utterly hilarious, fast-paced, and absurd play with some extremely dark twists and turns.

What is the voice of reason?

: a person who influences others to act sensibly She was the voice of reason in our group.

Who is Alex commentary YouTuber

Eboys Alex Elmslie (born: February 1, 1999 ), better known online as ImAllexx (also known as Lil Revenue ), is an English YouTuber best known for his commentary videos about trending topics. He also occasionally streams on his Twitch channel. Alex ran two podcasts; they were called The Camp Cast with his friend James Marriott and Happy Hour alongside JaackMaate and Stevie.

• He now runs his own podcast called Internet Sensation,
• He is also a member of the Eboys, along with James Marriot, WillNE, and Memeulous,
• Alex is known for making videos on popular YouTube topics or controversies, and of people who indirectly mention him in videos ( KSI likely being the biggest example).

He has had a number of popular series, including “We Watch.” with fellow E-Boy member James Marriott, and reacting to episodes of TLC ‘s “90-Day Fiance”.

What happened to Alex on The voice 2023

Blake Shelton ‘s team on The Voice Season 23 was unexpectedly down one member last week when Alex Whalen quit the competition. The London-born singer was supposed to compete in a Battle against Neil Salsich, but Shelton and host Carson Daly revealed that Whalen had left the show due to “personal reasons.” In a recent YouTube video, Whalen elaborated on his departure.

• Read more about Whalen and check out his explanation video below.
• Alex Whalen auditions for ‘ The Voice ‘ Season 23.
• | Casey Durkin / NBC Who is Alex Whalen? As noted in his bio on NBC’s website, Whalen, 43, moved from London to the U.S.
• With his wife in 2015.
• He couldn’t legally work without a visa, so he focused on developing his music hobby.

A few years later, Whalen and his wife moved from South Carolina to Florida, where he has been working gigs at several beach bars. However, he wanted.

4/10/2023by Elise Nelson Showbiz Cheat Sheet

Which BBC presenters have denied?

Image source, PA Media An unnamed BBC presenter is facing fresh allegations by the Sun newspaper after it claimed he paid a teenager for sexually explicit photos. The star was pictured in his underwear “ready for my child to perform for him”, their mother told the paper,

1. It is unclear how old the young person was at the time, but the paper has claimed they were 17 when payments from the presenter started.
2. The BBC has said it takes any allegations very seriously.
3. The allegations, first reported by the Sun on Friday, are that the BBC presenter paid £35,000 for explicit photos over a three-year period.

The young person’s mother told the paper her child, now aged 20, had used the money from the presenter to fund a crack cocaine habit. She said if the alleged payments continued her child would “wind up dead”, the paper reported on Saturday. The Sun said the young person’s family complained to the BBC on 19 May.

The family is reported to have become frustrated that the star remained on air and approached the newspaper, but said they wanted no payment for the story. A BBC spokesperson said on Friday: “We treat any allegations very seriously and we have processes in place to proactively deal with them. “As part of that, if we receive information that requires further investigation or examination we will take steps to do this.

That includes actively attempting to speak to those who have contacted us in order to seek further detail and understanding of the situation. “If we get no reply to our attempts or receive no further contact that can limit our ability to progress things but it does not mean our enquiries stop.

If, at any point, new information comes to light or is provided – including via newspapers – this will be acted upon appropriately, in line with internal processes.” The BBC has not said anything further about the allegations since its statement on Friday. But serious questions remain for the BBC about what investigations went on since the family says it alerted the corporation.

Caroline Dinenage, senior Conservative MP and chair of the Culture, Media and Sport committee, said: “It’s vital that TV companies have in place the right systems and processes to ensure their stars, who have disproportionate power and influence over the lives and careers of others, don’t abuse it.” There is pressure on the corporation’s HR department to “investigate these latest claims quickly and explain what has happened since this story first came to light back in May”, she added.

Earlier, former home secretary Priti Patel said the BBC’s response had been “derisory” and called for a “full and transparent investigation”, accusing the corporation of becoming a “faceless and unaccountable organisation”. The presenter is not due to be on air in the near future, but BBC News has not been told whether or not there has been a formal suspension.

But the BBC will need to answer if this should have happened sooner, if the investigation should have been more thorough, and if it is fair to its other presenters unconnected to this who are finding themselves facing false rumours. The Sun says there will be a probe by the head of corporate investigations team who has spoken to the family, but the BBC has not confirmed this.

Which BBC presenter has been suspended

Huw Edwards, a BBC presenter, has been named as the individual who allegedly paid a teenager for explicit photographs. He will not face criminal charges. Edwards’ wife has stated that he is receiving treatment for serious mental health issues.

Which TV presenter had a stroke

BBC F1 presenter Jennie Gow, 45, reveals she has developed dyslexia after suffering a stroke brought on by a cough – as she returns to work 8 months on from the terrifying health scare.

Who is the BBC presenter suspended July 2023

LONDON — The person at the heart of a British media storm has been identified as Huw Edwards, a news anchor whose distinctive Welsh lilt has been the voice of some of Britain’s most historic moments and who was suspended this week over allegations that he paid for sexually explicit images from a teenager.

According to a statement released Wednesday by his wife, Vicky Flind, Edwards is “suffering from serious mental health issues” and “receiving in-patient hospital care where he’ll stay for the foreseeable future.” The brief statement did not address in any detail the allegations made against Edwards over the previous five days.

“Once well enough to do so, he intends to respond to the stories that have been published,” his wife said. She asked for the media to respect the family’s privacy — and added that Edwards “was first told that there were allegations being made against him last Thursday.” Edwards is a celebrity news reader and more recognizable on the street than a star footballer.

1. He is famous for his measured delivery — old-school, even a bit dull, a critic might say, but with a voice as comforting as a cup of tea.
2. Like documentarian David Attenborough, Edwards has been seen as a kind of national treasure, a jewel in the BBC crown.
3. When the royal family was gathering at the bedside of Queen Elizabeth II, the BBC was committed to ensuring that it would be Edwards who would narrate the announcement of her death.

He wasn’t on duty that day, but was tracked down at a barbershop and told to get ready to go on air in his black suit and tie. Edwards, 61, is now on the other side of a major news story. Scotland Yard’s Specialist Crime Command said Wednesday that it had concluded an assessment and found no evidence of a crime committed by Edwards.

In Britain, it is illegal to make or possess sexualized images of anyone under 18. Following the police statement, the BBC said it would continue its in-house investigation. The public broadcaster has so far defended its handling of the case, but Director General Tim Davie acknowledged that the accusations “are clearly damaging to the BBC — it’s not a good situation.” The case has dominated the U.K.

media sphere for days with a feverish drip, drip, drip of reporting on its various twists and turns. BBC News has been live-blogging its own scandal. Prime Minister Rishi Sunak weighed in over the weekend — at a point when his spokesman said the British leader did not know the name of the accused — describing the allegations as “shocking” and “concerning.” Edwards is one of the public network’s highest-paid stars.

1. He has been a fixture on British television for decades, a throwback to an earlier age when a trusted voice — a British version of Walter Cronkite — was the calm in the middle of the news storms.
2. It was Edwards who snagged President Barack Obama ‘s only U.K.
3. Interview in the spring before the Brexit vote.

It was Edwards who anchored the royal weddings, the coverage of the queen’s funeral in September and the coronation of King Charles III in May. And most evenings at 10 p.m. — from 2003 until he quietly disappeared this month — he was the silver-haired presence with gravitas in the chair for the BBC’s flagship nightly news program.

The scandal first broke on Friday, when the Sun tabloid reported a mother’s accusations that a male BBC presenter — who was initially not identified, but described variously as a “star” and “household name” — sent her child a total of 35,000 pounds ($45,000) for sexual images since 2020, when the young person was 17.

The mother blamed the man and the BBC for funding her child’s use of crack cocaine. The BBC said in a statement on Sunday that it “first became aware of a complaint in May,” but that “new allegations were put to us on Thursday of a different nature.” On Monday, a lawyer representing the young person issued a denial statement, saying “nothing inappropriate or unlawful has taken place between our client and the BBC personality and the allegations reported in the Sun newspaper are rubbish.” The mother and stepfather stood by their earlier accounts.

On Tuesday, two other young people came forward with complaints about the presenter. One, in their early 20s, told BBC News that the broadcaster had sent them “abusive, expletive-filled messages.” The Sun also reported that a third person, age 23, claimed the presenter broke lockdown rules to meet them during the covid pandemic.

Gone are the days when British newspapers would gleefully name those accused of allegations, without fretting too much about privacy and defamation laws. The Sun withheld Edwards’s identity in its initial spate of stories. The BBC did too, citing privacy protections.

But the fresh claims led to other presenters urging Edwards to come forward — to end all the wild speculation about which BBC figure was behind the scandal. “These new allegations will result in yet more vitriol being thrown at perfectly innocent colleagues of his. And the BBC, which I’m sure he loves, is on its knees with this,” BBC radio host Jeremy Vine tweeted.

After the statement from Edwards’s wife, public messages from colleagues were generally supportive. Another BBC personality, John Simpson, tweeted, “I feel so sorry for everyone involved in this: for the Edwards family, for the complainants, and for Huw himself.

• No criminal offences were committed, so it’s a purely personal tragedy for everyone involved.
• Let’s hope the press leave them all alone now.” Edwards is married to a television producer and they have five children.
• He got his PhD on the history of 18th-century Welsh chapels.
• He is reported to be a weekly churchgoer.

Edwards has previously spoken about his bouts with depression and said that exercise, in particular boxing, helped with his physical and mental well-being. He documented his fitness and weight loss journey on Instagram — on an account that has since been deleted.

“I couldn’t get out of bed. I didn’t want to go to work. I didn’t want to speak to anybody,” he told the Daily Telegraph of his struggles with depression, which he said started in 2002. “And of course, the issue was you have to maintain a public image, that is — you’re a well-known face. Whenever I had to go live on air, I would literally have to tell myself — come on now, you’ll be okay now.

You just have to do it, and I just had to push myself in a way.” It was arguably his report of the queen’s death that brought him most acclaim. Nearly 10 million people tuned in at 6.30 p.m. on Sept.8 when Edwards announced that the queen had passed away “peacefully” in Balmoral, Scotland.

What reporters were kicked off Twitter

Suspension of journalist accounts

Who is the BBC presenter accused of paying for photos?

The BBC presenter who allegedly paid a teenager more than £35,000 for sexually explicit pictures has been named as Huw Edwards. He was named by his wife Vicky Flind in a statement issued on his behalf. Huw Edwards latest: BBC presenter ‘suffering serious mental health issues’ She said her husband was “suffering from serious mental health issues” and is now “receiving in-patient hospital care where he will stay for the foreseeable future” as she asked for privacy for her family. Image: Huw Edwards presenting BBC News after the allegations were reported to the corporation. Pic: BBC News The revelation the presenter at the centre of the allegations was Edwards came shortly after the Metropolitan Police revealed there was “no information to indicate that a criminal offence has been committed”.

After the Metropolitan Police said it would take no further action, a spokesperson for the BBC said: “The police had previously asked us to pause our fact finding investigations and we will now move forward with that work, ensuring due process and a thorough assessment of the facts, whilst continuing to be mindful of our duty of care to all involved.” The corporation later added that Edwards was facing “yet more allegations of inappropriate behaviour” towards colleagues at the BBC.

Spreaker This content is provided by Spreaker, which may be using cookies and other technologies. To show you this content, we need your permission to use cookies. You can use the buttons below to amend your preferences to enable Spreaker cookies or to allow those cookies just once.

You can change your settings at any time via the Privacy Options, Unfortunately we have been unable to verify if you have consented to Spreaker cookies. To view this content you can use the button below to allow Spreaker cookies for this session only. Click to subscribe to the Sky News Daily wherever you get your podcasts BBC director-general Tim Davie said in a message to staff: “This will no doubt be a difficult time for many after a challenging few days.

I want to reassure you that our immediate concern is our duty of care to all involved.” South Wales Police then issued a statement saying they had also investigated allegations and had found no evidence of any criminal offences being committed. The Sun newspaper, which originally printed the claims, has since said it has “no plans to publish further allegations about Huw Edwards” and will co-operate with the BBC’s internal investigation process.

Read more: New claims Edwards sent ‘flirtatious messages’ to BBC staff The newsreader’s career so far Everything we know about allegations against him Please use Chrome browser for a more accessible video player Huw Edwards: Career at the BBC Edwards, 61, is one of the corporation’s most high-profile newsreaders and is currently on a salary of just over £430,000.

He has presented the flagship BBC News at Ten programme more than a dozen times since the claims were allegedly reported to the corporation on 19 May.

Why did Belfield stalk?

‘I love you, and there’s nothing you can do about it’: will jail silence Jeremy Vine’s stalker? W hen Alex Belfield was sent to prison for five and a half years last month for online stalking, his accusers cried with relief. Finally, respite from what for some had been a decade of near-constant abuse.

1. No more waking up in the middle of the night filled with dread about what he might have said about them to his then 373,000 subscribers or in bitter emails to their bosses or clients.
2. For the TV presenter, the most high-profile target of arguably Britain’s most prolific troll, it would be the first time in several years that he could host a live phone-in without worrying that one of Belfield’s acolytes would hijack the programme to confront him with Belfield’s lies.

The relief was temporary. Within hours, a video appeared on Belfield’s “secret” video channel, accessible to anyone willing to pay him a pound a week. “If you are watching this, I have been sent to jail,” intoned Belfield in his Steve Wright meets Alan Partridge boom, standing in front of a skewwhiff union jack in the living room of his home, wearing one of his trademark jazzy shirts.

• For just over three minutes, the 42-year-old delivered a monologue in which he said he was in prison for simply “defending himself”.
• All he had done, he suggested, was challenge people who had said “things I believed to be untrue”.
• He had “never gone near anyone”, he insisted, and was not accused of threatening any violence.

Belfield compared his treatment with that of a police officer who had escaped jail despite being convicted of possessing child abuse images. “I’m clearly of more risk to this country than a man who is attracted to children,” he deadpanned. He ended with one of his catchphrases – “I love you, and there’s nothing you can do about it” – before making what to his victims was a sinister promise: “We will be back.” It was classic Belfield. Remorseless Belfield videos himself as he arrives at court in July. Photograph: Jacob King/PA The royal “we” was a frequent Belfield affectation, designed to give the impression that he sat at the top of an anti-woke multimedia empire in the mould. In court, he claimed to have nine employees, but who they are remains a mystery.

When not filming himself he would address his camera operator as “Tarquin”. He would invite viewers to send in fan mail not to any registered office but to his local pub, whose landlady he described as his “receptionist”. To those who had been monitoring Belfield’s output for the past few years, it was no surprise that he wanted the final word.

This was a man who had not only eschewed lawyers to represent himself in court, but who had reported on his own trial each night online; a man who even after being found guilty, appeared on stage in Blackpool with controversial rightwing commentator Katie Hopkins, playing up his role as “The Stalker” as he awaited sentence.

1. The morning of his sentencing, Belfield had sat silent in the dock at Nottingham crown court as barrister David Aubrey KC finally mitigated on his behalf.
2. Belfield, a former radio presenter turned YouTube “free speech advocate”, was “deeply sorry” for the hurt he had caused, said Aubrey, after Belfield was convicted of stalking Vine and three other men online.

It didn’t work. Judge Saini jailed Belfield for five years and 26 weeks, accusing him of having “weaponised the internet” to “haunt” his targets. “Online stalkers like you have the ability to recruit an army of followers whose conduct massively expands the effect of your stalking.

That is why I say your stalking is in many respects more serious than a conventional stalker,”, Four women, past and previous BBC DJs and executives, had also accused Belfield of stalking them via email and social media, but the jury found him not guilty on those charges. Regardless, the judge clearly considered him a threat.

“Each of them suffered a campaign of harassment by email and social media communications. Each of them suffered serious mental health problems arising from Mr Belfield’s conduct,” he said, imposing indefinite restraining orders preventing Belfield from contacting the women. Alex Belfield and Katie Hopkins in a video on her YouTube channel, advertising the show they did together. Photograph: YouTube The eight complainants hoped to never hear from their tormenter again, only to discover that he had arranged for that one final, defiant video to go live after the judge sent him down, goading them from beyond his prison walls.

Within days, 15,000 people had signed a “Free Alex Belfield” petition and Hopkins was on Instagram mocking Belfield’s targets for whining about simple “hurty words”. Would they ever truly be able to escape the man Vine described as “an Olympic-level” stalker? How a failed local radio DJ with Timmy Mallett’s dress sense ended up making potentially hundreds of thousands of pounds broadcasting lies about his largely obscure enemies is a story that begins in 2010.

That’s when Rozina Breen, then the managing editor at BBC Radio, decided to take what she thought was a calculated chance. She was looking for a new presenter to liven up the mid-morning show and thought Belfield, who was working for BBC Hereford and Worcester, was the man for the job. BBC Radio Leeds presenter Liz Green, who was harassed for 10 years by Belfield. Photograph: Christopher Thomond/The Guardian A few months in, alarm bells started to ring, remembers Liz Green, who presented the lunchtime show that followed Belfield’s each day.

First Belfield bawled out the station’s beloved gardening correspondent for a perceived act of insubordination, prompting a surge of listener complaints. Then, during a broadcast at Leeds Playhouse, he asked an elderly lady what colour knickers she was wearing, resulting in the theatre boycotting the station.

One day, Green says she found a talented young producer crying in the toilets after being shouted at by Belfield. Green was having none of it: “I went up to him and I said: ‘You are a grade-A wanker.'” She stands by that description, but came to regret making an enemy of someone who turned out to be a herculean grudge-holder.

1. Ten months into the job, Belfield pushed his luck too far in an innuendo-laden chat with the station’s weather presenter, in which he suggested he had been masturbating over her.
2. Despite later coming out as “a member of the LGBT community” when defending himself against allegations of homophobia in his trial, Belfield attempted to project an image of rampant heterosexuality for much of his life, with frequent references to “breasticles” and “the current or future Mrs Belfield”.

Breen sacked him on the spot, but agreed to honour the last two months of his contract. Soon she terminated it altogether, after he tweeted something that suggested – albeit in veiled terms – that Green should be sent to Auschwitz, after his rival presenter fronted a highly praised documentary about the concentration camp. ‘The optics aren’t good’ former managing editor at BBC Radio Leeds Rozina Breen. Photograph: Jill Mead/The Guardian Then began a 10-year campaign of harassment against both Breen and Green, as well as Helen Thomas, Breen’s line manager, who was head of regional and local programming for Yorkshire.

Another BBC radio presenter, a transgender woman called Stephanie Hirst, became Belfield’s next target after refusing him an interview after her transition. She suffered years of what the judge described as “transphobic and hateful comments motivated in part at least by feelings of jealousy as to her success when his own career within the BBC had foundered”.

So scared was Keith that he gave neighbours a copy of Belfield’s photograph, in case he decided to take his campaign of harassment offline One of the BBC targets was Bernie Keith, a veteran presenter at BBC Northampton who was once Belfield’s friend.

1. Apparently jealous that Keith’s BBC career carried on while his own was stymied, Belfield set about trying to ruin Keith’s life using his usual weapons of YouTube, Twitter and emails.
2. It was a nine-year obsession, which saw him make what the judge described as “the false and scandalous accusation” that Keith regularly had sex in public on gay beaches with strangers.

The effect on Keith’s life was profound. He told the jury he was seconds away from killing himself. Sentencing Belfield, the judge said he had “made this highly successful and confident radio presenter lose all joy in life and turned him into a shell He was terrified of you.” So scared was Keith that he gave neighbours a copy of Belfield’s photograph, in case he decided to take his campaign of harassment offline.

Eith tried in vain to get YouTube to remove all of the libellous videos, even turning up at the social network’s HQ to beg it in person. Belfield’s final BBC target was Vine, who made the mistake of responding after learning that Belfield had called him and fellow broadcaster “cunts” online. He soon made it to the top of Belfield’s hitlist, featuring regularly as a hate figure in his videos and social media posts.

, Vine said: “I have in the past had a physical stalker who followed me. That is a picnic compared to this guy. It’s like an avalanche of hatred that you get hit by.” Vine didn’t think he had ever even met Belfield, but another former BBC radio presenter, James Hazell, remembers Vine delivering a masterclass to local BBC presenters in 2010.

Belfield clearly resented being there, recalls Hazell – “He was sulking and had a face like thunder. He hated being told how to improve by Jeremy, and that’s where I think it all started.” Hazell is one of numerous others who now say Belfield trolled them. In October 2020, Belfield spread a false rumour that he was having an affair with a fellow BBC radio presenter, using it as part of his ongoing campaign against the national broadcaster.

to say Belfield targeted him for many years, but that he was too frightened to go to court to give evidence. Some believe he relied on others as media monitors and had sources within the BBC itself: he seemed to know everything discussed on each of their radio shows every day, along with a number of internal matters.

After being sacked from BBC Radio Leeds, Belfield had to move back to live with his mother in Nottinghamshire and found it difficult to get regular radio work. He started his own online show, Celebrity Radio, bagging interviews with famous people in return for advertising plugs, and tried to sell himself as a theatre and restaurant reviewer.

He soon made enemies in the theatre world, says a director who started monitoring his online activities a few years ago (and who wishes to remain anonymous). “Belfield became known across theatres as someone who would throw a tantrum if he didn’t get the press tickets he wanted.

• He would harass some theatre companies, to the extent that his email address was blocked, and front of house staff were warned about him.” Belfield had a complicated relationship with the entertainment industry, the director believes.
• He loved and hated showbusiness, and if he couldn’t be you, he’d have you, and be part of you, another way.

If that way was via abuse, then that was certainly effective in being part of your story. He hated the thing he loved, or hated other people having success within it.” Philip Dehany, a rival theatre blogger, who was targeted by Belfield in YouTube videos. Photograph: Alicia Canter/The Guardian The final two victims who went to court and testified against Belfield were both from the theatre world. Neither had ever met him.

1. Ben Hewis is a videographer who works in the theatre and wedding industries and Philip Dehany was a rival theatre blogger.
2. Both had come to the defence of others under attack by Belfield.
3. Belfield soon became obsessed with ruining Hewis’s professional and personal life.
4. He took photos of Hewis’s wife and young child from social media and included them in his videos, even using a picture of a foetal scan showing Hewis’s unborn baby as part of his relentless email campaign of harassment.

He also contacted Hewis’s clients to undermine his business and encouraged his followers to join in with the abuse. Dehany ended up the subject of numerous YouTube broadcasts where Belfield suggested he was mentally ill, and called him a “mincer” and a “little twirly” with an “incredibly tiny man sausage”.

Belfield also phoned Dehany’s mother and then threatened to broadcast the call – “an outrageous and cruel act”, said Saini – and effectively sought to blackmail him by revealing details of a long-spent conviction. B y the time Belfield began tormenting Dehany in 2020 he had become a successful YouTuber who could have been earning up to £528,000 a year, according to Social Blade, a website that monitors social media channels.

That all stopped in February this year when YouTube suspended monetisation on Belfield’s Voice of Reason for violating its “creator policy”, after about high-earning conspiracy theorists. That prompted Belfield to set up his “secret” Voice of Reason channel, which streamed behind a paywall on his website.

• Launching it on 1 March this year, Belfield said he wanted to broadcast “away from the toxic spectrumed trolls, lefties, fart heads & Mogadon moronic medicated mentalists & journalists”.
• How many people signed up for £1 a week is unclear, though some live streams attracted barely 300 viewers.
• It was on that channel that he first broadcast highly partisan “court reports” from his own trial, later posted to YouTube and still available to view, after persuading the judge that he was a journalist and should be given the same rights as the Nottingham Post.

That he was allowed to play court reporter upset many complainants, particularly as Belfield decided not to give evidence under oath. Some feel he was given too much power in his own trial. While never submitting himself to cross-examination, he was allowed to deliver a pompous closing speech deriding the case as a “BBC and police witch-hunt” and describing himself as “the No 1 anti-BBC journalist”. A wacky array of clothing Belfield arrives at court in August. Photograph: Jacob King/PA The judge did stop him from interrogating complainants, appointing David Aubrey as a proxy advocate. But when Aubrey caught Covid, Vine opted to be questioned by Belfield rather than delay a long-booked holiday, and found himself being asked about the true meaning of the word “cunt”.

While most defendants on trial try to avoid cameras on the way into court, Belfield seemed to be doing his best to attract them, wearing an array of wacky jackets and shirts. The day he was found guilty he was wearing a Bermuda shirt and shorts. Instead of a lawyer, he was often accompanied by James Brandon, a member of the old-school comedy duo the Grumbleweeds.

Fans, largely older women, were often in the public gallery to show support. How much money Belfield made in recent years is unclear. His last company, Champagne Sippers, incorporated in December 2020, has never filed company accounts. He bought his detached house in Mapperley, Nottingham, for £314,950 in October 2018, and it is mortgaged.

• After his first arrest, in June 2020, he started two crowdfunders to raise money to sue first the BBC and then Nottinghamshire police.
• According to GoFundMe, which hosted the appeals, he raised a total of £29,446.
• Most of it had been withdrawn by Belfield by the time GoFundMe got around to banning him for inappropriate “off-platform” behaviour, with the exception of £5,260, which was refunded to donors.

Even after YouTube stopped him making money from his channel, Belfield was still reasonably flush. He is being sued for libel by Vine, as well as by the Nottinghamshire police detective in charge of the case against him, and when ordered to pay Vine’s initial costs of £26,000 after failing to file a defence on time, paid up, in October 2021, within a few days.

• It was lockdown that offered Belfield an opportunity to make some proper money.
• Unable to work and claiming to be on £86-a-week universal credit when the theatres shut, Belfield reinvented himself as a rightwing shockjock.
• At first, he grew his audience with silly sketches and phone-ins, railing against government Covid policy, particularly the ban on care-home visits.

Steven J Miller, another YouTuber, explained Belfield’s initial appeal, recorded after Belfield was jailed: “Alex Belfield was responsible for putting smiles on thousands and thousands of people’s faces and he did that not by slagging people off but by him being him.” People loved Belfield’s innuendos, said Miller, giving an example of when Belfield filmed himself on a train platform as a train whizzed by and exclaimed: “Oh, I nearly got sucked off!” Then in June 2020, Katie Hopkins was permanently banned from Twitter, opening up a gap in the market for anti-woke, anti-immigrant polemics with an English accent.

• Belfield started wearing Trump polo shirts and began campaigning against small boat crossings in the Channel, using a dinghy as a prop for his live shows.
• Close Belfield-watchers believe his lurch to the right was a business decision rather than an ideological one.
• The Belfield Green knew at Radio Leeds in 2010 was difficult but he wasn’t a “table-thumping, immigrant-hating rightwing polemicist,” she says.

“I don’t think that stuff even bothered him.” His anti-BBC stance soon attracted prominent support: Conservative MP Andrew Bridgen appeared on his shows and last year wrote to Priti Patel, then home secretary, to complain about what he called a “BBC witch-hunt” against Belfield, after one of his arrests.

• The Guardian asked Bridgen if he regretted supporting Belfield and did not receive a response.
• B arring a successful appeal, Belfield will serve at least the next two years and 39 weeks in jail, before being released on licence to serve the second half of his sentence.
• But some of the complainants feel they never really got justice.

Breen and Green both think the BBC failed all four women who gave evidence against Belfield. Both question why the corporation only really took the abuse seriously once a well-known man – Vine – was involved. “The optics aren’t good,” says Breen. For the best part of 10 years they had been complaining about Belfield’s vendetta, in which he sent hundreds, if not thousands, of emails to them and their superiors.

• Sometimes these emails included what the judge said were “highly offensive and personal comments about their physical appearance, including sexualised comments” as well as “wholly false allegations” that the women had bullied him.
• I accept the evidence that Mr Belfield effectively ‘followed’ these women by online harassment throughout their careers,” said the judge.

Helen Thomas, now director of BBC England, told the jury that she was told to ‘man up’ by a boss when she complained about Belfield’s behaviour The BBC turned a blind eye to the abuse, says Green: “We were not heard. Our fears and anxiety were downplayed.” Helen Thomas, now director of BBC England, told the jury that she was told to “man up” by a BBC boss when she complained about Belfield’s behaviour.

1. Worse, in 2013, a few years into Belfield’s campaign against her and Breen, the BBC’s HR team chose to launch an investigation not into their harassment, but into whether they were guilty of bullying Belfield.
2. They were exonerated.
3. Breen says she and others flagged Belfield’s behaviour repeatedly but were told “just not to look at the emails, or to delete them”.

Though the BBC knew Belfield was spreading lies about them in public, “at no point did anyone from the BBC refute the allegations”, she says. “Silence was the best policy in the eyes of the corporation. The fact we were asked to ignore potentially criminal evidence is an issue.

1. The fact we were left unsupported from the acts of someone regarded as a prolific, now convicted, stalker is problematic.
2. Nobody from the corporation has apologised for what I and the others faced for more than a decade.” Very soon after Vine complained, by contrast, the BBC appointed a QC to conduct its own investigation into Belfield’s behaviour, which it handed to Nottinghamshire police.

Green blames the BBC for the not-guilty verdicts: “The reason I believe the court didn’t find him guilty on our charges – though we will never know what the jury was thinking – was because the BBC allowed it to go on for so long. I think the jury thought: ‘Oh, it can’t have been that bad.'” She says Belfield has “destroyed” her mental health, and that she was so frightened that he or his followers would turn up at her house, she spent £20,000 on security measures.

I live in fear and I have done for a long time,” she says. “We were the learning curve for Belfield. He realised what he could do and did it with impunity. We were the warm-up act.” Vine said it is “very, very important that the BBC learn lessons” from what happened to the women at BBC Leeds. “It was hard to take any satisfaction from the jailing of this despicable man when he will not serve a single day in jail for what he did to the four Leeds women,” he said.

Green still works for the BBC but is trying to negotiate a settlement to leave. Breen left this summer to become editor-in-chief at the Bureau of Investigative Journalism. She has asked the BBC to commission an independent investigation into what happened.

• There are lessons to learn clearly and the toxic nature of online hate will only get worse for staff.
• It’s not enough to leave us to sink and swim, as we had to in this case,” Breen wrote in an email to Rhodri Talfan Davies, the BBC’s director of nations.
• In a statement last week, the BBC said: “We know this has been very difficult for those involved and we continue to provide support to current and former staff.

We also want to learn from this to ensure we offer the best possible support to all colleagues, who may sadly experience the threat and risks of online stalking in the future.” Last Friday, the four BBC women received an email saying the BBC had commissioned an internal review to “establish what lessons can be learned from the recent criminal case”.

The women were told: “The aim of the review is to provide recommendations to the BBC on how it can best support colleagues facing online stalking or significant social media harassment.” Green says she is “deeply disappointed” that the BBC did not commission an independent inquiry. “It could be interpreted as a reluctance to expose systemic failings and a complete failure in duty of care.

Perhaps that independent review would expose those at the very top (men) who left us exposed. I can tell you now their proposed review will not claim responsibility nor say sorry. That’s a word I have never heard We four were left to suffer and are suffering still,” she says.

A few weeks after he was sent to jail, most of the 7,000-plus videos Belfield posted on YouTube are still publicly accessible. His subscriber count has dropped, but still stands at 354,000. Asked why it had not banned Belfield from its platform following his conviction, YouTube did not respond. It sent this statement: “Monetisation on the Voice of Reason channel remains suspended for violating our,

Our prohibit content that threatens individuals and we have removed several videos for violating these policies.” Unless there are broadcast prohibitions attached to his release, there is nothing to stop Belfield firing up Voice of Reason again when he gets out of jail.

Who is Alex Belfield Wikipedia?

Personal life – Vine was married to an American banker, Janelle, for seven years, which ended in 2000. Vine stated that it was “very sad”, but their jobs and travel meant they had “seen very little” of each other in three years. He married Rachel Schofield, a journalist and news presenter, in 2002.

1. The couple have two daughters.
2. Vine is the patron of Radio St Helier, a UK‐registered charity providing radio programmes to patients at St Helier Hospital in Carshalton,
3. Vine is a practising Anglican and attends church.
4. He has deplored what he sees as the marginalisation of Christians in British society, saying that “You can’t express views that were common currency 30 or 40 years ago”.

In August 2016, a car driver threatened and was abusive to Vine while he was cycling along Hornton Street in Kensington, London. Vine captured the encounter on his helmet camera, later broadcasting it on YouTube where it was viewed several million times.

1. Vine also reported it to the police.
2. On 18 April 2017, the car driver was jailed for nine months for threatening behaviour.
3. In October 2021, anti-vaccine campaigners protested outside Vine’s home, objecting to the BBC’s coverage of COVID-19 vaccines,
4. As Vine was not at home at the time, they presented their “anti-vaxx writ”, a document without legal authority, to his wife.

He later posted videos of the incident online. Vine has said he contracted COVID-19 and commented on receiving the vaccine. In February 2022, Vine was “knocked out cold for a minute or two” after falling 8 ft (2.4 m), onto grass, from his penny-farthing bicycle.

1. He was taken to Charing Cross Hospital where doctors told him he was “lucky to have just a black eye and some aches from the fall”.
2. In August 2022, Alex Belfield, a former BBC Radio Leeds presenter, and host of YouTube channel “Alex Belfield – THE VOICE OF REASON” was convicted at Nottingham Crown Court of stalking Vine and three others.

Vine described Belfield as “the Jimmy Savile of trolling”, and claimed to be subject to an “avalanche of hatred” and a “constant bombardment” of harassing tweets and YouTube videos. Vine also told the court that he feared Belfield or one of his followers would go to his home, which led him to putting a picture up of Belfield so that his family could recognise him.

Is Alex still on the voice

Neil Salsich performed solo instead of going head-to-head with the London-born rocker. THE VOICE – “Blind Auditions” Episode 2303 – Pictured: (l-r) Blake Shelton, Kelly Clarkson, Chance The Rapper, Niall Horan – (Photo by: Evans Vestal Ward/NBC) Blake Shelton ‘s final Battle on The Voice was a bit underwhelming — but it’s not the cowboy’s fault; it’s just how it is when a head-to-head winds up being a solo act. That’s exactly what happens when host Carson Daly arrives to announce that Team Blake artist Alex Whalen has left the competition ahead of his Battle Round performance against Neil Salsich.

You may remember Alex Whalen from the Blinds as the London-born country-rocker who won Blake over with his rendition of Sammi Smith’s “Help Me Make It Through the Night.” Or, you may remember him as the guy with the spectacular beard. We don’t get any real details as to why Whalen has decided to leave, beyond “personal reasons,” and the show leaves it at that.

Alex Whalen Alex Whalen | Credit: Chris Haston/NBC But the show must go on, as they say, and so Carson introduces Neil Salsich, who will still be able to perform the Battles song he’s been rehearsing — Marvin Gaye’s “I Heard It Through the Grapevine.” Neil doesn’t waste his big solo moment — having screen time on this show and facetime with the coaches is important — and he has a good time up on stage with the pressure off.

Blake loves the “charisma” Neil showcases up on stage, while Niall Horan is impressed that Neil, who sang “Honky Tonk Blues” to earn a four-chair turn in the Blinds, can believably perform both Hank Williams and Marvin Gaye. It shows a range that’ll serve him well in this kind of competition. Although, perhaps it wasn’t a completely pressure-free Battle: Blake jokes that before Neil got up on stage, he told his artist that if he “lose this Battle, it will be the worst fail in history this would be some Adam Levine -level failure stuff,” he says, invoking the name of his one-time Voice cohort.

Of course, in the wake of Alex Whalen’s surprise departure, there was never any doubt Neil Salsich would be moving on to the Knockouts on Team Blake. Related content: