Who is Murad Merali and why has everyone suddenly started speaking about him?

Murad Merali caused a stir on social media earlier this year after explicit content was leaked online.

The podcast host and YouTuber shared a video titled 'Addressing my past' that includes a trigger warning for heavy and emotional content.

The allegations on Twitter include race play (an extreme fetish where two consensual people use racial slurs and derogatory comments during sex), content from his alleged OnlyFans account and foot fetish material.

Twitter threads and speculations were rife, with the common theme: "Everything I’ve learnt about Murad Merali in the last 19 minutes has been against my will."

After taking a break from social media, Merali appeared on an episode of the HC Podcast on November 7. He opened up about the allegations to podcast host Chuckie, leaving many Twitter users confused as to why.

During their chat, Merali addressed allegations of race play, saying that's what fans had the biggest issues with.

Chuckie said: "I actually don't think that people would have had that big of an issue about the 'foot thing'. I don't think anyone would have had a problem with that at all," before candidly asking Merali whether he held racist views towards black people, to which he responded "no."

The podcast host then probed him on how he got to a place where he "felt so privately comfortable" saying "racially problematic things".

Merali recounted that the "majority was just 'foot stuff'" before suggesting that not all of the videos included race play. He detailed going into hotel rooms where clients would ask him to do certain things, including race play.

He claimed he initially refused because it felt "ridiculous", which, in one instance, led him to get "knocked out".

Merali continued that he did go forward with it, at times, for the money and because his refusal often turned to violence.

Merali also acknowledged that his apology video "wasn't the best thing to do" to which Chuckie agreed that it was "terrible."

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Who is Murad Merali?

Merali is a 26-year-old podcaster renowned for his regular opinionated takes on Love Island. His YouTube channel has reached over 300,000 subscribers with popular explosive interviews with ex-Islanders like Deji and Summer.

In addition to his online presence, Merali says he is a property developer with a degree in Clinical Psych & Cognitive Neuroscience, according to his Instagram biography.

What are the allegations against him?

The YouTuber has faced controversy online after videos resurfaced that appear to show him engaging in foot fetish-centred content and race play consisting of extreme racial slurs in Reddit threads.

Much of which cannot be embedded for obvious reasons.

Fans of the podcaster have expressed their views on the content on Twitter.

What did he say in response?

In a seven-minute clip posted to his YouTube channel on August 10, Merali said, "First and foremost, the written content is not me, the severely derogatory comments are not written by me, and I will stand by that – this is not who I am.

"Some of this content is also not me, and I can profusely apologise, I take full accountability for how this has come across and how everybody has felt from this content."

However, he did take responsibility for "some of this content", acknowledging that it was not him "now, not recently, in the last five to six years, not any moment now."

Merali added that he did not write the derogatory race play screenshots.

He said: "These screenshots associated with these pictures, this vile racist verbiage that has been used is not written by me. This is not done by me in any capacity, and this needs to be made abundantly clear with full force immediately.

"People make their own captions, they mix it with their own pictures for their own satisfaction, their own desires, with their own fantasies, their own ideations – whatever they have. They then put it together for their own mental satisfaction for whatever desire that they have as a person."

He admitted having a foot fetish, saying it was a result of being sexually assaulted at age 14.

"I developed these fetishes, this foot fetish, I developed it through what happened to me. I needed to make money, that was my only goal to make money," he continued. "I needed to make money to get out."

He concluded his video by reiterating: "The specific racist captions were not written by me. I did not sit there and do that, at all."

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