Australia's Next Top Model tough judge Alex Perry has been drawn into a grubby online fight with a university student who attacked the fashion maestro by creating a hate page.
Outspoken star and fellow Top Model judge Charlotte Dawson has also become embroiled in the controversy after defending her friend with a series of inflammatory remarks about the student’s social status.
Sydney student Lucy Blunt set up the anti-Perry group in September last year, shortly after he appeared on Celebrity MasterChef.
The war of words began when Ms Blunt wrote last year: "Masterchef were after celebrity cooks, Alex Perry signed up, he thought they were after c-cks!"
Perry discovered the group and joined, referring to its members as "f---ing losers". He told ninemsn he did not know Ms Blunt before the random attack, which he said left him deeply offended.
"I have a right to my opinion and others have the right to theirs but there's a certain level of decency you have to uphold," he said.
Dawson was among those who leapt to Perry's defence, calling Ms Blunt a "sad attention whore who is loving winding everyone up".
"Some suburban fattie [sic] with too much time on her hands ... has had her jollies creating this page," Dawson wrote.
"Some fame whore ... wanting to brag to her mates about calling you a twat."
Dawson, who also called Ms Blunt a "westie scrag", said she had no regrets about defending her friend to online "trolls".
"These kids can't do this and not expect to get a reaction ... if it's about me, I really don't care, but if it's something about my friends, the dragon will come out," she said.
Posts on the wall show most of the group's 133 members supporting Perry.
Most of the messages stopped in December last year, which Perry put down to people "getting bored".
Ms Blunt did not reply to a request from ninemsn for an interview.
Social commentator and body image expert Melinda Tankard Reist said Perry and Dawson should have ignored the attacks.
"While the site does have a provocative name, it seems they couldn't rise above it and just ignore it," Ms Reist said in a recent blog post, which slammed Next Top Model as "toxic sludge".
"They had to launch a FB version of a ballistic missile against its creator."
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