When the former Coronation Street actress Helen Flanagan carelessly posted a photo of herself with a gun to her head, on Twitter, The Sun newspaper were quick to lambast her actions. Flanagan came under fire when she posted the picture, just hours after news broke of the Newtown school gun massacre in Connecticut. When she realised that her actions had been so insensitive, she removed the picture. The Sun reproduced the photo on their front page, with the headline “As 26 lie dead after US school horror, Corrie’s Helen Flanagan poses with a gun to her head… BRAINLESS.”

This morning (December 20, 2012), Helen appeared on the ITV breakfast show Daybreak, to apologise for posting the insensitive snap and explain that she understood how stupid she had been. “It was the stupidest thing I’ve ever done in my life,” she said and explained that she had posted the picture of herself modeling in lingerie, with a gun to her head, because she had been hungover at the time. The accompanying comment read “head f***,” in reference to how she was feeling. “It was just a completely out of context tweet, completely. I did the tweet and it was some different pictures in one and it was relating to a hangover on Monday night. And I put something like, oh head… you know, and I treated this picture completely carelessly.” When people started to react to the picture, accusing her of being insensitive, she realised her error of judgement and deleted the offending tweet.

“I deleted it straight away, I rang my best friend and I was like, “I can’t believe what I’ve just done”, and I said to her, “shall I reply to these saying how sorry I am?” And then I thought no, it will just draw attention to… what I’ve done – it’s so humiliating.’” When The Sun published the picture on the front page, Flanagan tweeted her disgust, saying “I am absolutely disgusted in this. Completely cruel. I will absolutely NOT stand for this kind of bullying.”