Rudi Lickwood has branded judge Kate Copstick a ‘bitter and twisted failed stand-up’ after being kicked off ITV’s Show Me The Funny.

The 47-year-old was ejected from the show this week after Copstick, Alan Davies and Jo Brand decided he had the worst gig in front of staff at Watford Hospital.

But he claimed that the judges ‘wanted to keep me at the bottom’ and added: ‘I don't think my gig was as bad as it was made out.’

He claimed: ‘I'm not so bothered about Kate Copstick because Kate Copstick is a failed stand-up comic anyway. She's quite bitter and twisted.’

However he did was bothered enough to slate her, saying in an interview with the Digital Spy website: ‘She is criticising everyone for something that she can't even do. It's plain to me that I could do her job, but she couldn't do mine.

‘She wants to be the next Simon Cowell, but we don't want one or need one. She stifles comedy rather than letting it grow. Kate Copstick is a gatekeeper to preventing a lot of variety hitting the comedy circuit.’

Later, he added: ‘I don't think a woman has to be ugly or a bunny boiler to be funny. I think that's what Kate Copstick and Jo Brand have to do, but not other women.’

On Monday’s show, Copstick told Lickwood his ego was getting in the way of him being a good comic. After another lacklustre performance he previous week, she told the comic: ‘Rudi, you need to get over yourself. You’re too old, too ugly and too experienced to be mucking about like this.’

As a performer, Copstick has appeared in the kids’ TV series No 73 and Chucklevision, while her one-woman show, Hardly Camp At All, played New York.

Lickwood’s full set, in which he talks abut a cyst on his scrotum, is online here – and doesn’t seem to attract many laughs, although he does get an applause break for mentioning the pay gap between NHS pay and Wayne Rooney’s.