It was a phrase that Laura Whitmore deployed in the immediate aftermath of her fellow television presenter Caroline Flack’s death. By urging listeners to her BBC Radio 5 Live show to ‘be kind’, she struck a compassionate chord by reflecting one of the last Instagram messages that Flack had posted before her suicide. At a time when her mental turmoil had become a matter of public debate, Flack asked people to treat one another nicely.
Whitmore, 36, who became her replacement as host of ITV’s Love Island, has been a champion of the ‘be kind’ movement ever since, using her social-media platforms, with a combined following of two million fans, to, in her own words, ‘call out the trolls’.