Lily Allen leaves Twitter over Army storm

Published Jul 12 2012, 13:22 BST  |  By Greg Laing

Lily Allen has announced that she is temporarily leaving Twitter following a controversy involving a member of the British Army.

Allen this week complained to the Ministry of Defence about a soldier's tweet, leading to an Army spokesperson revealing that the matter would be investigated.

Twitter user Harry Wilson, commenting on rumours that Allen was adopting a child, had written: "All the best with your new family just seen you bought s**t I mean adopted a child from Africa."

Allen has subsequently been criticised by a number of the microblogging site's users, with attacks focusing on the claim that Allen incorrectly branded the message racist after failing to understand that a comma was intended before the word "s**t" rather than after it.

The It's Not Me, It's You singer has defended herself with messages including: "So let me get this straight it's 'he was just harassing you, not racially harassing you'. Ah, ok then."

She also responded to an accusation about her "misreading the comment and jumping the gun" by writing: "No, his fault for mis-writing more like! IF that's the case, and if it is, then I'm sure his superiors will understand."

Allen has now, however, decided to take a break from the site, tweeting: "Ok I'm leaving twitter for a few days,hmmmm maybe hours, we'll see. The stupidity of some people on here is astounding."

The star was recently revealed to be pregnant with her second child, after giving birth to daughter Ethel Mary last November.