So we wondered was it true. And, as it turns out, it was true, so true in fact that James went on Kelly and Michael this morning to apologise and communicate his absolute mortification. Poor bastard. To be honest, we thought it may have been the world's most questionable PR stunt for his new film Palo Alto, which opens stateside on May 9th. As it turns out, we're not alone in thinking this.

Anyway, the 35-year-old actor has apologised for contacting Scottish student Lucy Corde via Instagram and trying to arrange to meet her in a New York City hotel after she caught his eye outside a theatre on Broadway, which allegedly led to the below correspondence.

Photos emerged of an exchange between the Spiderman star and the teenager, who is holidaying in Manhattan with her mother, on Thursday (03.04.14), in which he asked her, "What's the hotel? Should I rent a room?"

All this lead to the following apology on Live! With Kelly and Michael

A rough transcript pour vous: "I'm embarrassed, and I guess I'm just a model of how social media is tricky. It's the way that people meet each other today, but what I've learned - I guess because I'm new to it - is you don't know who's on the other end... You get a feel for them, you don't know who you're talking to. I used bad judgment and I learned my lesson... Unfortunately in my position, not only do I have to go through the embarrassing rituals of meeting someone, but if I do that, then it gets published for the world so it's doubly embarrassing."

Kelly Ripa then tries to make him feel better by saying "It's happened to eeeevvverybody."

Eh, no it hasn't.