Roseanne Barr has blamed sleeping pills for the tweet in which she compared a former aide of Barack Obama’s to an ape, which resulted in the cancellation of her comedy series ‘Roseanne’.

The 65 year old had successfully revived her formerly much-beloved Nineties comedy series ‘Roseanne’ on ABC earlier this year, with the network green-lighting a second season after the initial run concluded amid great ratings. However, ABC abruptly announced that they were dropping the show earlier this week, after a tweet concerning Valerie Jarrett, a former senior Obama advisor who was born in Iran to African-American parents.

In the subsequent days, Barr has variously apologised and vowed to leave Twitter but also continued to dig her hole even deeper.

Roseanne BarrRoseanne Barr has continued to make the situation worse

The latest of these was a tweet published on Tuesday night (May 29th) by the TV star said that what she wrote was “unforgivable” and, while asking her fans not to try to defend her actions, blamed them on the side-effects of taking the sedative Ambien.

More: Robert De Niro blasts Donald Trump and Roseanne Barr – “we’re beyond trying to see another person’s point of view”

Despite this, social media’s glee at Trump supporter Barr’s downfall continued unabated, with even an official spokeswoman for Sanofi, the pharmaceutical company that makes Ambien, saying in response to her excuse: “While all pharmaceutical treatments have side effects, racism is not a known side effect of any Sanofi medication”.

“I apologise to Valerie Jarrett and to all Americans,” Barr had written earlier the same day, after follow-up posts in which she defended her remarks as a “joke”.

“I am truly sorry for making a bad joke about her politics and her looks. I should have known better. Forgive me - my joke was in bad taste.”

On Monday, ABC had already dropped Barr’s series, writing: “Roseanne's Twitter statement is abhorrent, repugnant and inconsistent with our values and we have decided to cancel her show.”

In addition, other networks and streaming services announced they were cancelling re-runs of ‘Roseanne’ and removing archive series from availability.

More: ‘Roseanne’ comeback proves runaway ratings success