Joe Lycett caused controversy by getting political during the opening ceremony of the Commonwealth Games in his hometown of Birmingham.

Having been invited to take part he appeared in a pink tracksuit and said: "I'm going to do something now that the British government doesn't always do, and welcome foreigners."

He later followed it up by tagging the Home Secretary in a tweet: "soz @pritipatel just a bit of banter tehehe"

The remark on live television inevitably caused a stir on Twitter, with some viewers approvng, others outraged.

Andrew Jazzie was in favour: "Take a bow Joe Lycett."

My name is James tweeted: "If you’re upset that Joe Lycett made a joke about the U.K. government not allowing in foreigners wait until you find out about the Rwanda policy by the U.K. government, then you’ll really be upset"

Patchpapa101 was not so keen:"Pity about @joelycett and his humourless and totally inaccurate comments about the UK gov being unwelcoming to foreigners."

While Nelly tweeted: "Pretty shitty that he called fellow members of the commonwealth the derogitory term of 'foreigners' . All them people waiting to parade out and celebrate and getting done like that. To be 100% clear, i hate all politicians.... Pick your battles"

Vvvvv tweeted their disgust: "Joe Lycett is a total and utter twat.....patronising these great athletes by bunching them together as 'foreigners' just so he could take a cheap jibe. Pity that Wankers like him are let into the country"

It is not known whether the remark was an ad lib or scripted and approved by the BBC. Before the broadcast Lycett had said  on Heart Breakfast with Jamie Theakston and Zoe Hardman. "I'm part of the Opening Ceremony and they've said - I'm introducing some countries - but they've said you've got 30 seconds where you can… they sort of said 'say what you like before you introduce the countries and they want me to submit my sort of script of what I'm going to say...but you know... with live... the minute you go live, there's a little thing in your head that just says 'say something awful'."