How why etc. Only anyone who watches TOWIE knows who he is.

I thought it was very sweet of the girl to help him out. Glad they didn't mock him. Even Steve Davis kept a respectful silence. If he has learning difficulties or hasn't been properly educated, then nothing is lost by simply teaching him. He strikes me as a nice guy. Tragic story about his mom. Awful.

No-one is saying it is an excuse. He lost his mum tragically at a very young age and he doesnt happen to be very bright. They are two different factors.

He may well have struggled at school because of this loss - but as far as I'm aware he has never stated that or made excuses.

He suffered a big trauma in his life and to only hear the truth much later in life must have been a huge shock too.

He has 2.7m followers on Twitter. That's a fair amount of people.

People on Digital Spy think when a reality TV star has a family member that dies, it's all a plan so that they can go on TV years later and use it as a "sob story"...

My first reaction is oh god NO! He hasn't impressed me so far but I'll wait and see.

I agree and I have no doubt it was kept from him for the right reasons. Suicide in a family, as I have personally had to deal with , is a very difficult experience for everyone to deal with and telling any child is hideous.

nobody is saying it is.

but he may be brighter in other areas we do not know about

Only, I haven't seen anyone use this against him. Does he even talk about it in the show, at all?

None of the annoyance felt towards him on here is anything to do with a supposed "sob story".

However, we saw only an edited version. We have no idea how long she actually spent teaching him.

Anyway, I'm less surprised than many people that he hasn't learnt to tell the time from a clock face with hands. If he has grown up with digital times on watches, clocks, phones, on the TV, wherever, he will not have needed to learn how to read an analogue clock.

Thinking of something a bit more advanced: Many people now can use a calculator but how many would be baffled by a slide-rule? When I was a child (not recently!) for calculations more complicated than simple arithmetic we had to use a slide-rule or log tables. Have people under 40 today even heard of slide-rules? And even if they have, would they be able to use one?

Technology moves on, and analogue clock faces with hands are now old technology.

One time, on "The Voice" thread, one guy was accused of telling a sob story merely for saying that he had a sister.