Lee Mack pauses The 1% Club to issue apology to contestant for his comments after they gave wrong answer

The 1% Club host Lee Mack quickly apologised to a contestant after admitting that his joke 'was a bit harsh'.

The presenter, 56, paused the ITV show after he 'felt ashamed' for his jibe at contestant Ally Davies during Saturday's (15 February) episode.

Although Davies appeared to be fine with the witty remark, Mack insisted that it 'was too much'.

For those unaware, The 1% Club is a popular game show, which sees 100 contestants - all with a £1,000 stake - battle it out with the hopes of getting to the latter stages.

Mack immediately apologised to the contestant (ITV)

With 15 increasingly difficult questions to get through, the aim is to correctly answer the last winning question that only 'one percent of the nation knows the answer to'.

If they get it right, there's a whopping £100,000 cash prize up for grabs.

Now, Mack returned to our screens over the weekend and started things off with the first '90 percent question' of the show.

The comedian asked contestants to unscramble letters on a can to make the two-word food 'tomato soup'.

However, Davies was the only one to get the question wrong.

"So, we've lost one person, Ally Davies," Mack said, before she replied: "Such a div."

"Oh, Ally, Ally, Ally. What happened?" the host continued.

Davies then explained: "Because I'm 70 in March, and I wanted to come on the show and at least do well."

She said she would have loved to spend the prize money on loads of different pairs of glasses to match her outfits.

Mack then joked: "Well, you came on the show, the first part worked," adding: "Okay, yeah, keep trying different pairs until you can see the word soup."

Contestant Ally Davies couldn't get passed the first question (ITV)

Although Davies knew where he was coming from, the presenter was fast to apologise.

"Sorry, that was a bit harsh. I'm sorry, that was too much," he said.

"No, I'm wrong. I feel ashamed, because usually I go for somebody and have a laugh with them, then turn to the next person and do the same with them.

"I've forgotten you're the only one that was out. Unlucky, Ally."

This comes after fans were divided by the final question on last week's episode (9 February), which saw winner bag £99,000.

Once again, The 1% Club has left viewers at home completely stumped (ITV)

The question Mack asked was: "If you remove all the underlined letters from the sentence below, what word can be spelt if you rearrange all of the remaining letters."

And the sentence they had to pick the letters from was: "ANIMAL TOSHUNINSTAMPEDE."

Fans became divided by this sentence because when you take away all of the underlined letters, you’re left with: Thpelean.

Then if you rearrange them to something mildly readable, you’ve got the correct answer: Elephant.