Morrissey suggests UKIP leadership contest was rigged during BBC session

"I was very surprised the other day," he says between songs. "It was very interesting to me to see Anne Marie Waters become the head of UKIP... oh no sorry, she didn't, the voting was rigged. Sorry, I forgot..."

Waters is a noted anti-Islam campaigner with ties to the extreme right who's been dubbed "too extreme for Nigel Farage". She lost the leadership contest to Henry Bolton.

A tense silence followed Morrissey's initial comments, before the former Smiths frontman added: "You didn't get it, did you? You obviously don't read the news..."

A joke? The deadest of deadpans perhaps, but this is hardly Morrissey's first or only incident like this - there's even a section dedicated to 'racism controversies' on Wikipedia. Just this year he's made a ridiculous statement about the Manchester terrorist attack and drawn criticism for attempting to sell an offensive piece of merch featuring civil rights activist and author James Baldwin.