Jason Manford has hit out at internet trolls who viciously criticised Gary Barlow for performing at the Olympics Closing Ceremony last night (12.08.12).

The Take That frontman bravely took to the stage at London's Olympic Stadium with bandmates Mark Owen, Howard Donald and Jason Orange less than a week after his daughter Poppy was delivered stillborn on August 4 but was blasted for cashing in by bitter internet users.

After Jason posted the comment ''Fair play Gary Barlow. What a superstar. Don't think I could perform after such a tragedy, amazing,'' on his Facebook page, he was inundated with comments lashing out at Gary.

He wrote: ''A joke is a joke, we've all told an off colour joke to a close friend, knowing full well that it's not you're actual opinion. But some of the comments I saw in those 334 would make your blood run cold.

''First up is person A ... Let's assume he's been drinking tonight, but he wrote: 'money first with mr barlow lol'

''Now firstly, I suspect that he never actually 'loled' at his own comment since, well, it's not funny and secondly it's not factually correct. As a great many of you pointed out, none of the acts got paid for either Olympic ceremonies, they got paid £1 each for contracts but that wouldn't even get you a hotdog in the Olympic park (they're £3.40, I was there last week).''

Another user also hit out at Gary, claiming he was putting ''money and his job before his family''.

In response Jason wrote: ''This woman says 'it won't do him any harm when that song sells copies again and makes him some money.' Now I don't know what is going through Gary's head at this time, but I'm pretty sure the already richer-than-all-of-us-put-together superstar at no point thought, 'I know my wife gave birth to a stillborn child the other day, but I really need to sell some more records.'

Referring to another poster who said ''It's not quite the same as losing a child who's actually lived properly though, so why are people making out like it is? If the kid was like 5 years old it'd be 100x worse!'', Jason wrote ''Actually went from hating this guy to just thinking, maybe he just wrote something without thinking and is now, quite rightfully, getting it in the neck.''

Jason also pointed out he is not a close friend of Gary, but was horrified by the level of abuse being directed at the pop star, who is heavily involved with many charities.

He said: ''I'm not a Take That fan, I mean I like them, but I don't own any of their music but I really like Gary Barlow, I've never met him (he sent me an email once asking if I could do a charity thing for him) but he seems like a thoroughly lovely chap.''