The Enemy’s Singer Lashes Out at Bullying

The Enemy’s Tom Clarke has lashed out against music industry “bullying”, accusing Time Out, NME and other “judgmental scum” of cruelly mocking his height.

“It’s 2014 and we’re still obsessed with what people look like instead of who they are or what they do,” he complained. “What they fail to appreciate is that I’ve achieved more than they ever will despite being a fucking hobbit.”

That word – hobbit – was at the centre of Clarke’s Twitter tirade. “If I had a pound for everytime a journalist called me a hobbit I could buy enough bullets to round them up and disfigure the lot of them,” he wrote. “Morons. Jealous, juvenile, inept, generically conformist morons … Do me a favour and get yourself a life transplant.”

He singled out Time Out London, which recently referred to the Enemy as “subtlety-deficient indie hobbits”. “Wonder if @TimeOutLondon would like to justify their personal attack on my height & explain why it’s relevant to everybody now?” Tweeting in response, Time Out claimed they were deriding the Enemy’s hair, not their height. “[Fancy a] trim next time you’re in town?” came the magazine’s reply.

“Would you feel it was appropriate to comment on Adele’s weight for example?” Clarke asked Time Out. “Or if I was black? … Why do you feel the need to attack people’s appearance at all?”

The Pigeon Detectives’ Matt Bowman chimed in with his own experiences: “If I add all my pounds to your pounds for every time [journalists] mention my curly hair in a negative tone, we could buy a tank!” he wrote.

On Wednesday, Vice published an article titled, “We Will Give Tom From The Enemy £1 Every Time Someone Calls Him A Hobbit”. It includes the line, “Tom Clarke’s so short that he confuses being in one of Britain’s most grotesquely uninspiring bands … with the actual abuse that is sometimes afforded to the verticaly challenged.” A few hours later, Clarke announced he is “taking a break” from Twitter. “This industry should be ashamed of [its] complete tolerance of bullying,” he wrote.

The Enemy’s new singles and rarities album, Dancing All Night, is available now. Their most recent album was 2012’s Streets In The Sky, which debuted at No 9.