Nicola Adams and Ella Baig on ‘troll tackling’

Nicola Adams OBE and her beauty blogger girlfriend Ella Baig have spoken about dealing with online abuse.

Olympic boxing legend Nicola Adams OBE and her beauty blogger girlfriend Ella Baig spoke to today’s Loose Women of the nasty comments they receive online and how they’re taking the trolls on.

Kicking off Loose Women’s Pride Week, the pair discussed posting a video clip online revealing some of the negative comments they receive. Nicola said: “We wanted to highlight the things that are said to us.”

Ella added: “We got a really positive response to the video. We made it to encourage people to be aware of what they say to other people. You might think it’s a one-off comment, but it can add up.” 

Nicola said: “We’re both really quite strong willed and comments don’t really affect us too much. We always ignore it [but] for a lot of people it’s hard to do that sometimes. People might think we don’t experience those types of comments, but we do. Those comments do affect people – keep on fighting, don’t let it get you down!”

She continued: “Normally I just bat comments away and I won’t bother responding to them, I’ll just basically block them. But I know for some people, they’re not as strong willed as I am or as Ella is.” 

Ella noted: “Some people feed from giving them attention, but I think the majority of comments I get don’t come from someone trying to be horrible, they’re mostly just small comments people make unknowingly. I think highlighting to them that there’s no need to say something negative, they might realise and not do it to someone who it would hurt more.”

Nicola said: “And if they do go too far there is the lovely block button!”

Speaking of spending more time together in lockdown, Ella said: “It’s shown us that we’re good together.” Nicola added: “I’m always away travelling and working and everything. It’s nice to spend time at home with Ella and do things together.” Ella laughed: “It’s the most time we’ve ever spent together in the two years we’ve had together.”

Of managing her ADHD in lockdown, Nicola said: “I made myself a little schedule of what I do on a daily basis – my working out, reading, guitar lessons, I’m learning languages as well. As well as spending time with Ella and my dogs as well, for me it was finding things for me to do.”

Loose Women, weekdays at 12.30pm on STV, UTV and ITV.