Jay Slater’s native bar slammed for ‘not coming house’ snap of him with a soccer

A bar local to missing Jay Slater’s hometown has been blasted for making a “disgusting” joke on Facebook.

The Bees Knees pub in Accrington, Lancashire, not far from Jay’s family in Oswaldtwistle, faced a fierce backlash for comparing the 19-year-old last seen in Tenerife, to England’s football success.

Jay, who’s learning the ropes as an apprentice bricklayer, was on a holiday with pals when he went missing after a night out with a couple of fellow Brits in Masca on June 19.

READ MORE: Jay Slater TikTok sleuths slammed as ‘playing heroes,’ crime expert warns

Much of our Jay Slater coverage is all in one place

Poking fun at his disappearance and England’s painstaking Euro 2024 run, has seen The Bees Knees slammed by its social media followers as fury erupted in reaction.

A picture on its Facebook page showed Jay’s face next to a football, captioned “both not coming home”. It wasn’t long before the cruel attempt to be funny was quickly scrubbed off the the pub’s page after bosses admitted it was “highly sensitive” and “deeply offensive”.

Rachel Hargreaves, whose son Brad is tight with Jay, tore into the pub for the distasteful post, baffled by the sheer nastiness of some folk. “Jay’s hometown he is a customer in the bar too and they posted (that) in error apparently,” she vented.

She branded the joke as “sickening”. “How can anyway even share stuff like that, very disgusting and very disrespectful,” Rachel blasted back, reports the Mirror.

The Bees Knees has issued a heartfelt apology to its patrons on Monday, admitting that an external social media firm was responsible for a controversial post after being hired to boost their digital image. The pub also made a generous £1,000 contribution to the GoFundMe campaign for Jay’s search efforts, marking it as the largest donation to date.

Bees Knees stated on Monday: “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 screenshot shared by the pub seems to show a comment from Affordable Social stating: “This morning, an employee posted something that does not reflect our brand standards or our client Bees Knees Accrington and has caused offence 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 to everyone affected by this incident.”

Daily Star has contacted Affordable Social.

For more shocking stories from the Daily Star, make sure you sign up to one of our newsletters