Pundit sacked after racially abusing Marcus Smith

, said: "Neil Francis's remarks were unacceptable and he has apologised for them. The comments were initially released in the podcast last week but were subsequently removed by our production team a short time later. This should have happened before it was released and we apologise for the error.

Speaking on the Independent.ie’s Left Wing podcast, Neil Francis described late call-up Marcus Smith, who was born in the Philippines to a British father and a Filipina mother, as possessing an “Oompa Loompa tan”.

“We find the remarks offensive and have written to the Independent to express our deep dissatisfaction,” said a Lions spokesperson.

The comment has since been edited out of the podcast but the original quotes and audio have both been widely circulated on social media.

A spokesperson for Mediahuis Ireland, publisher of Independent.ie

"We acknowledge that Mr Francis says his comments were inadvertent but we have decided to end our relationship with him and he will no longer write columns or contribute to our podcasts."

A statement from Smith’s club Harlequins read: “Harlequins is disgusted by offensive comments made by an Independent.ie columnist regarding Harlequins fly-half Marcus Smith and await a reply regarding the matter.”

Here are five things you might not know about the fly-half.

Smith was born in Manila in the Philippines and picked up the game at the age of 7 with Centaurs RFC when his family decided to move to Singapore, he learnt the game there before moving to Sussex as a 13-year old. He has two younger brothers, Luc and Tomas.

His Dad, Jeremy Smith lived in Hong Kong from 1992-97, playing for Valley and the national side at fly-half.

The naturally gifted playmaker received a sports scholarship to attend Brighton College where he studied maths, politics and business while going on to achieve great things on the rugby pitch as he captained the school's 1st XV en route to an unbeaten campaign.

At just 18 years of age and 200 days, he made his Premiership debut at Twickenham to become the youngest fly-half to start in the top flight since a 17-year old George Ford.

Smith turned down the chance to join the Team GB training squad ahead of the Olympic Games due to be held in Japan this summer.