Micky Worthless, the rapper whose battle with James Arthur led to the former X Factor winner quitting Twitter in a storm of controversy, says he took most offence at Arthur comparing him to the Taliban.

Most of the criticism of Arthur's rap has centred around his use of the word "queer" as an insult. Arthur apologised for using the term and contextualised it within the rap battle form in a series of tweets, which have since been deleted. After an argument with comedian Frankie Boyle, Arthur today (November 18) deleted his Twitter account.

Worthless, pictured inset, tells NME that he felt the lowest blow was Arthur's comparing him to the Taliban. "Yeah, he called me Taliban. I was like, ‘Come on man, why are you bringing my actual race into it?’ You can tell he’s not very smart because I just don’t know how he thought that could fly," says Worthless.

The Croydon rapper originally issued his track mocking Arthur, 'Stay In Your Lane', because he didn't feel it was right that Arthur was presenting himself as a battle rapper on national radio. "James Arthur does not deserve to be jumping the queue and going on 1Xtra’s Fire In The Booth and I tweeted as such,” explains Worthless. "I didn’t even tag him. But one of his fans replied and tagged him in it… and then he suddenly came at me! He’s like, ‘I know you, you’re the worst rapper in the world, I’d body you in a battle,’ and as soon as he said that, I wasn’t joking around any more. I was like, ‘Don’t use the ‘B’ word around me mate!’ So I let him have it. Slept on it, hit the studio, wrote it and uploaded it.”

'Stay In Your Lane' was followed, five hours later, by Arthur’s response 'Hey Mickey'. "It sounded like someone’s first tentative attempt at making hip-hop, which I’m quite sure that it was,” says Micky. “Appalling. There was no lyrical content, the beat itself was wack, the hook was wack, the lyrics were childish. I don’t think he knows about bars and beats. It was really cringeworthy. He really, really shouldn’t have done it.”

Despite Arthur's apology for the lyrical content of his rap, Worthless says he feels no remorse about his opponent's plight. Worthless says: "It’s great! I hate that corny X Factor non-music, it’s just a cash cow for Simon Cowell that tricks people into thinking that what they’re listening to has musical merit. Kids running round thinking James Arthur is something to be into, thinking it’s cool – what fucking planet are you on? I feel no remorse at all.”

“I’m sure I haven’t ended his career, X Factor will go on without me, but for the last couple of days, I gave people something to think about.”

Arthur's debut single 'Impossible' reached Number One last December and went on to sell over 1.2 million copies in the UK. He released the follow-up single 'You're Nobody 'Til Somebody Loves You' in October, which was followed by his self-titled debut album, which was released earlier this month, going in at Number Two in the Official UK Albums chart, behind Eminem's 'The Marshall Mathers LP 2'.