Ian H. Watkins, better known as “H” from British pop group Steps (think ABBA, but way more ‘90s) is having a bad couple of days. Despite usually being known as “H from Steps,” he shares his real name with Ian Watkins, another British pop star—who just pled guilty to a series of pedophilia charges.
Ian Watkins, lead vocalist of alt rock band Lostprophets, pled guilty to eleven counts of child sex offences on Tuesday. As soon as the news hit the Internet, people began to bombard his social media accounts with angry messages—or tried to, anyway. Instead, many of them ended up on the official Facebook fan page of Ian H. Watkins, a completely blameless ‘90s pop star who seemed understandably horrified by the mistake.
“H” wrote on Facebook:
Just to clear out some of the abuse there has been the past few hours… This is the ‘Official Ian H Watkins’ website. Better known as H from Steps. H is in NO WAY related with the news about the singer from Lostprophets! Please don’t post any comments about the news here because they will be deleted. Thank you!
Some of the commenters actually that “H” himself was the real criminal. That’s possibly thanks to an E! Online article (now corrected) that erroneously posted a picture of Ian H. Watkins above an article about Ian Watkins. This comes after “H” had to leave Twitter last week, thanks to the barrage of abuse he received when the Lostprophets singer’s first went on trial.
Since E! Online apologised on Tuesday night, the hate messages seem to have died down, with Ian H. Watkins’ Facebook suddenly flooding with supportive messages from fans—and suggestions that he should go back to calling himself “H”, which is the name most people in the UK recognise anyway.
Photo via bexybat / Tumblr