Dapper Laughs creator Daniel O’Reilly has claimed he was “bullied” into killing off his controversial act after receiving a “lot of hate” online.

The ‘lad culture’ comedian came under fire last year after footage emerged of him joking about rape during a stand-up gig and, shortly afterwards, announced that he would be retiring the character on Newsnight.

But now, in his first interview since retiring Dapper Laughs, O’Reilly has accused newspapers of leading a campaign against him and “100 per cent” violating his freedom of speech.

“I understand with freedom of speech comes consequences. I felt completely bullied out of it,” he told Newsbeat, adding that he was shocked at how the media were allowed to “fabricate and make up stuff and create a mass hysteria point of view around the character”.

“I come from quite a rough background, I don’t mind saying it,” he continued. “I’m working class, I know that my humour caters for that type of lad, or whatever, humour.

“But the majority of people at my shows were women. I understand the upper class are not going to like my humour, but they’ve bullied me out of continuing to do what I wanted to do.

“When they portrayed my humour to the masses, to the UK, they done it in a way where they showed everything’s falling apart, the rape joke and everything like that. I felt it was unfair really, to be honest.”

O’Reilly revealed that he experienced reporters “banging on the door with cameras”, harassing his family members and sending him hate mail “wishing that [his] dad had cancer and would die”.

When pressed further on the rape joke, he insisted that he has “never found rape funny”.

“There are millions of people in the UK who think they know who Dapper Laughs is that have never seen any of his videos. They’ve just heard that one joke and they’ve cast their opinion on that,” he said.

“Everything was too much. [Quitting] was the only why that I could stop the drama. Then, do you know what? I sat down and thought about it, I thought to myself ‘Nah, I’m not going to be bullied out of what I like doing. Let’s bring it back, let’s carry on’.”

Sorry everyone, but it looks like Dapper Laughs is here to stay.