Kilclooney had previously been labelled an “old racist dinosaur” by Piers Morgan, for comments he had made in 2017 about cricketer Moeen Ali. Kilclooney had said on Twitter that, “Times have changed! The England team now needs non English people in order to win Test Games”. When it was pointed out that Ali was born in Britain, Kilclooney responded, “Moeen Ali is proud to be British but racially he is not English. There is a difference between being English and being British!!”, adding that, “A Chinese born in England is Chinese and not English!”.[19] In May 2018, Kilclooney was forced to deny he was racist after referring to Taoiseach Leo Varadkar in a tweet as a “typical Indian”.[20]
