"I'm just an idiot": YouTuber PewDiePie apologises for racial slur

The Swedish vlogger – whose real name is Felix Arvid Ulf Kjellberg – said he was “not going to make any excuses” for using the racial slur during a game of PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds.

"It was something that I said in the heat of the moment," Kjellberg claimed in a YouTube video that has already had over five million views. “I said the worst word I could possibly think of, and it just sort of slipped out."

The offending video features Kjellberg saying "What a f***ing n*****," while shooting a video game character.

"Sorry, but what the f***? What a f***ing asshole," he adds.

"I didn't mean that in a bad way."

Continuing his apology, Kjellberg said: “It’s not that I think I can say or do whatever I want and get away with it, that’s not it at all, I’m just an idiot, but that doesn’t make what I said or how I said it OK. It was not OK. I’m really sorry if I offended, hurt or disappointed anyone with all of this. Being in the position I am, I should know better… and I owe it to my audience and myself to do better than this."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cLdxuaxaQwc&t=1s

“I’m disappointed in myself because it seems like I’ve learned nothing from all these past controversies,” he added, referring to the backlash he received when using ant-Semitic language in other videos. In that incident, a Wall Street Journal investigation found antisemitism and Nazi imagery in nine of his videos, which led to Kjellberg losing deals with Disney and his YouTube Red.

On another occasion, the online star, who has more than 57 million subscribers was suspended from Twitter for joking he had joined ISIS.