James Blunt sends direct messages to his trolls after calling them out on social media

Speaking to heat magazine, James explained: "When you're face-to-face with people, they're normally quite polite. When I do reply, I try and make sure it's with humour and kindness. I direct message them, because their notifications will start going, and you don't quite know how fragile they might be.

"They could be quite fragile, bearing in mind they're on Twitter, feeling empowered when they're upstairs in their bedroom with the curtains closed, their trousers round their ankles, writing something horrid to someone they've never met before. So, I direct message them often to say, 'Hey, this is all in good humour and I hope you see it in that way. Peace out!'"

The 'Monsters' hitmaker has fired back at plenty of negative comments on the social networking site over the years, but tends to poke as much fun at himself as he does at those who've tweeted about him.

He previously revealed: "What I do on Twitter is me laughing. Not only at those people, but also at myself."

But not everyone finds his behaviour hilarious as his record label asked him to tone it down prior to the release of his fifth album 'The Afterlove' in 2017.

He said at the time: "They asked me to stop, they said it was bad for my brand. I said to my manager, 'This brand is broken already and maybe I can just be myself now.'"

However, James refuses to let any comments affect him as he is more focused on his fans who have supported him throughout his career.

He added: "I am surprised by the reactions, both positive and negative. I get up to 10,000 people night after night watching me, but you might find four negative tweets online and they might affect me more, but I shouldn't forget that thousands of people have spent money to go to one of my concerts."