‘I’m not racist’, Liam Neeson insisted today as he appeared on Good Morning America to explain why he once roamed the streets for a whole week looking for random black people to murder because they were black.

Anyone see the slight contradiction in that sentence?

Not much shocks me about Hollywood any more.

It’s a corrupt, venal, amoral place where pretty much any kind of behaviour, however disgusting, is tolerated if the dollars still pour in at the box office.

I’m not racist’, Liam Neeson insisted today as he appeared on Good Morning America to explain why he once roamed the streets for a week looking for random black people to murder

But I was genuinely horrified when I read, and then heard from his own mouth on tape, what Neeson recounted to a journalist about an incident in his past involving a female friend who was raped.

It is worth repeating his exact words now so there can be no ambiguity or confusion as to what he said.

Neeson told The Independent’s Clémence Michallon what happened after his friend told him about the attack: ‘She handled the situation of the rape in the most extraordinary way. But my immediate reaction was… I asked, did she know who it was? No. What colour were they? She said it was a black person. I went up and down areas with a cosh hoping I’d be approached by somebody - I’m ashamed to say that - and I did it for maybe a week, hoping some black bastard would come out of pub and have a go at me about something, you know? So that I could… kill him.’

The more you read these words, the more jaw-droppingly appalling they get.

Or they do to me, anyway.

Neeson doesn’t equivocate: he wanted to exact revenge for his friend’s rape on ANY black person he could find that gave him any excuse to commit murder.

And this wasn’t a temporary moment of emotion-raging madness that lasted a few seconds or minutes.

This was a period of an entire week during which Neeson marched around with his cosh, seeking out an innocent ‘black bastard’ to kill.

Neeson doesn’t equivocate: he wanted to exact revenge for his friend’s rape on ANY black person he could find. For a week he marched around seeking an innocent ‘black bastard’ to kill

It’s the purest example of racism imaginable: a white man looking to indiscriminately murder any black person he finds in seven days who ‘provokes’ him in any kind of way.

Let’s be brutally honest: this is the kind of thing you might expect a Klansman from the Ku Klux Klan to say, and the kind of thing you might expect a Klansman from the Ku Klux Klan to do.

So when Neeson now says ‘I’m not racist’, that claim bears little resemblance to his words and actions after his friend was raped.

He says now that this happened 40 years ago when he was acting under a ‘primal urge’, that later he power-walked and sought help from a Catholic priest to curb his urges, and he is a changed man.

Perhaps he is.

Let’s take him at his word and accept he no longer feels any ‘primal urge’ to roam the streets looking for black people to murder.

But that doesn’t come anywhere near to excusing or even properly explaining what he felt and did in that horrific week.

And as for his claim on GMA today that he would have done the exact same thing if it had been a white guy, I’m not buying it.

‘If she had said an Irish or a Scot, or a Brit, or a Lithuanian, I know would have had the same effect,’ Neeson said.

REALLY, Liam?

Then why was your first question to your friend about the rapist’s identity ‘what colour was he?’ rather than ‘what accent did he have?’

No, you only cared about the man’s colour, and once you established he was black, you promptly sought horrific murderous vengeance on all black people.

Your disingenuous insistence now that had he been a white Irish man, you’d have gone out with your cosh for a week looking to murder random white Irish men is not just bullsh*t, it’s offensive bullsh*t.

You only cared about the man’s color, and once you established he was black, you sought murderous vengeance on all black people. Your disingenuous insistence that had he been white, you’d have gone out looking to murder random white Irish men is offensive bullsh*t

According to your own account, you never asked where the person was from, or how he spoke.

You only enquired about what colour he was.

So stop treating us like idiots please.

I’ve met Liam Neeson once, a year after the tragic death of his actress wife Natasha Richardson following a skiing accident in 2009.

It was at New York Knicks basketball game and he was with one of his sons.

We chatted for a few minutes, mainly about fatherhood – he admitted it was ‘very tough’ being a single parent - and he seemed a decent, intelligent and charming man.

He’s also a very fine actor, and I thoroughly enjoy his movies.

But my admiration for him on and off screen doesn’t permit me to give him a pass for his self-admitted history of violent-minded racism.

To my astonishment, some people today have tried to not only defend Neeson’s confession but even to suggest, as black England football legend John Barnes said, that he deserves a medal for it.

Apparently, because he’s been honest now about how he once roamed the streets for a week looking to murder black people, then he’s some sort of hero.

Well forgive me if I don’t join in the adulation.

Liam Neeson specialises in making very violent films - from his Taken series to his latest film, Cold Pursuit - about men who exact revenge on bad people.

That is why he made his comments in the first place – he was trying to illustrate how revenge is a bad thing.

Though if Neeson really thinks revenge is such a bad idea, perhaps it might be a good start for him to start declining lucrative movie roles in which he aggressively promotes it?

Neeson specialises in violent films - from Taken to his latest film, Cold Pursuit (pictured)- about men who exact revenge. That is why he made his comments in the first place – he was trying to illustrate how revenge is bad. Though if Neeson really thinks revenge is such a bad idea, perhaps he should start declining lucrative movie roles in which he aggressively promotes it?

More pertinently, the difference in his movies is that Neeson plays the good guy who kills the bad guys that have committed heinous crimes.

In his own life, however, it turns out he was the bad guy who wanted to kill entirely innocent people simply for the colour of his skin.

As Los Angeles Times columnist Carla Hall wrote: ‘Was he a racist or just a tightly wound man capable of vindictive violence? Or was he both? Of course, he was a racist. He was roaming the streets trying to find random back men to kill, and he gave every indication of being capable of violence.’

I have no idea what possessed Neeson, now 66, to reveal all this now, though given it was revealed during a press junket to promote his new revenge movie, the cynic in me suspects he did it precisely to garner the massive headlines it is now getting.

Movie stars want people to go see their movies, and lots of press coverage sells lots of movie tickets.

He knows this better than most.

But by disclosing his horror story to the world, Liam Neeson has exposed himself as someone very different to the person we all thought we knew.

Sorry Liam, but no amount of hand-wringing contrition now can change the fact that you once spent seven days wanting to murder innocent black people simply for being black.

There’s a word for that: racist.