Quote

I have received hostile voice mail messages and e-mails. They are often anonymous, I'm sad to say, as anonymous messages are delivered only by very low forms of human life, in my opinion.

I have so many e-mails from people who are like, 'I never knew a family could be happy like this... My parents hate each other. I hate my brother. We fight all the time. I never wanted to have kids before I saw your family.'

I've had particularly unpleasant stuff, and it has been reported that I've had death threats. Twitter and Facebook give people who have always been out there a platform from which to hurl abuse, and all I can do is try to block it out and remind myself that tweets are transient and get lost in the ether after a few moments.

I read our emails every day and I know there are people out there who think I'm awful.

Now with social media, people essentially come into my living room, my virtual living room, and tell me everything that is wrong with me.

Throughout my career, my family and I have fallen victim to inappropriate attempts to contact me by several unknown individuals.

Me and my sisters were so awful. One nanny, we loved, but we hacked her email and sent her boyfriend lots of weird messages, and we once actually locked her in the toilet, too.

I think a lot of stuff like people's emails getting hacked or that an email you sent is stored on a hard drive somewhere, that kind of stuff worries me a little bit. It's a weird thought that someone else could get into my information that easily. That stuff's pretty scary.

Some of the things you read you get an immediate reaction to so I've stopped reading things now. I do worry about my family though. Some people do try some nasty things to get at them and try and get a reaction from them.

I get an abundance of e-mail every day, some say 'dear Richard, can you call my husband, he weighs 400 pounds...' or 'my 14-year-old is 200 pounds...' or 'I just got divorced, no one wants me, I am 500 pounds.' So I pick up the phone and I call people.