Bees Knees pub in Accrington apologises for 'sickening' Jay Slater post

Pub owners have issued an apology after a meme about Jay Slater was shared on its Facebook page, and have donated a four-figure sum to his search appeal.

Bees Knees in Accrington, near Jay's hometown of Oswaldtwistle in Lancashire, came under fire after sharing the post referring to the hunt for the 19-year-old, who disappeared in Tenerife last month. Jay was on holiday with friends when he vanished while trying to walk back to his accommodation.

He had been hanging out with other UK tourists in the mountain village of Masca.

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On its Facebook page, the Bees Knees shared an image of Jay, alongside a picture of a football. The post was captioned: "Both not coming home", and has since been slammed as "disgusting" and "deeply offensive".

Rachel Hargreaves, the mother of Jay's best friend Brad Hargreaves, was among those to hit out over the post, as she said: "Jay's hometown he is a customer in the bar too and they posted (that) in error apparently".

She said the joke was "sickening", the Mirror reports, and wrote in response: "How can anyway (sic) even share stuff like that, very disgusting and very disrespectful".

The Bees Knees issued an apology to its customers on Monday, saying an outsourced social media company had made the post after contracting them to improve their online presence. The bar has since donated £1,000 to the GoFundMe page set up for helping the search for Jay, which appears to be the biggest donation yet.

In an apology on Monday, Bees Knees said: "This morning a conversation between Bees Knees Directors and Affordable Social has taken place in which we have decided to terminate our contract with immediate effect, after not receiving an adequate explanation into how this happened.

"Affordable Social were challenged three months ago to improve our social media pages via light-hearted humour, good content and sports talk.

"The post that made it onto the page was neither one of the above and was highly insensitive and deeply offensive. As a business, we are utterly gobsmacked that this has happened and how somebody could find good humour in a missing boy.

"I can’t stress enough nobody within the pub company has posted this status, some of which are receiving threatening messages which is completely unacceptable.

"As a company, we are East Lancashire based with our head office in Blackburn, we fully understand the impact this news about Jay has had on the area. We all have our fingers crossed for his safe return to the UK.

"We however fully appreciate the damage that has been done and nothing can change this, however, we will make a donation to the family fund of £1000 to assist the search for Jay."

A screengrab shared by the bar which appears to show a comment from Affordable Social says: "This morning, an employee posted something that does not reflect our brand standards or our client Bees Knees Accrington and has caused offence [sic] to others and upset to those involved. We are deeply distressed by the post, which was removed minutes after being posted.

"The employee responsible for this post no longer works for Affordable Social. We sincerely apologize [sic] to everyone affected by this incident." The Mirror attempted to contact Affordable Social separately.

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