MTV Movie Awards 2013: Tom Hiddleston pays tribute to One Direction Liam Payne's dog Loki in acceptance speech

MTV Movie Awards 2013: Tom Hiddleston pays tribute to One Direction Liam Payne's dog Loki in acceptance speech

Can you tell the difference?

Even when they’re not nominated â€" or even attending â€" an awards ceremony... somehow One Direction still get a mention.

It’s basically the safest way to give a speech in front of millions of people on telly â€" not forgetting the star-studded names in attendance â€" and guarantee screams of excitement.

And obviously Tom Hiddleston wasn’t going to miss a trick at the MTV Movie Awards last night.

The actor won Best Villain for his role as Loki in action-packed movie The Avengers.

But after reeling off the usual spiel, the acceptance speech led on to the more important things in life â€" a certain pup belonging to Liam Payne of little known boyband 1D.

Liam, 19, named his new dog after the fictional supervillain from the popular Marvel comics.

Tom was clutching his new trophy and said: “I need to thank Liam Payne from One Direction, who I believe has called his dog Loki.

If it was between Liam and Loki, we'd probably go for Loki

“Now, Liam's dog Loki is unquestionably better looking and certainly better bred - and probably better known.”

Before adding: “It's probably got more Twitter followers than I do.”

We’re quite sure that pet owners get offended when you refer to their creatures as ‘its’ and not by it’s gender (though we think it’s weirder if you can actually tell without knowing a name).

Liam shares mutt Loki with girlfriend Danielle Peazer and after hearing the tribute, the pretty dancer tweeted: “Oh my god, me and @Real_Liam_Payne have just seen this! So amazing.”

Watch the acceptance speech below - and if you're not bothered about the rest of it, skip to 50secs for mention of One Direction.

When the popstar and his girlfriend - who he met during his time on the X Factor - posted pictures of Loki online, fans began sending cruel messages to the, er, dog.

Things got really nasty when some of the crazy bunch resorted to their customary death threats, attempting to start the hashtag “#dieloki”, that, fortunately, didn’t catch on.

They then added: “I’ll kill that dog #iswear.”

Two trolls actually conspired to finish off the pup. “Let’s kill him!” wrote one. “Gun? Knife?” came their pal’s response. “Knife! We don’t have guns.”

See, there’s method in their madness, however slight.

Fortunately some kind soul then set up a a Loki fanpage (yes, really) and wrote: “Please don’t send hate :(”Other more rational and animal-loving fans also gave reasons to spare poor Loki the bitter onslaught of the 1D army.

†œJust remember that loki can’t help who his owner is so he doesn’t deserve hate he has feelings too,” they explained.

If it makes you feel any better guys, we're team Loki.

View gallery

• "
• "
• "
• "
• "
• "
• "
• "
• "
• "

View gallery  

Watch the MTV Movie Awards in full at 9pm tonight (Monday 15 April) on MTV