Superstar rapper Nicki Minaj once worked at a Red Lobster restaurant in the Bronx.

She was fired for ‘discourtesy to customers’.

This followed a familiar behavioural pattern.

By her own admission, Minaj was fired from ‘at least fifteen jobs’ for similar reasons.

That’s a LOT of jobs and a LOT of discourtesy.

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In 2011 Nicki was a guest on America's Got Talent when Piers was still a judge, pictured above. She was too busy to take a photo with kids and scowled her whole time there

I experienced at first hand what a stroppy little piece of work she could be when she appeared as a guest act on America’s Got Talent when I was still a judge on the show.

My three sons, aged 16, 13 and 9 at the time, were keen to get a photo with her backstage.

I approached her dressing room, where she was lounging and yawning on a couch, and made the polite request.

Back came the message: ‘No.’

‘Sorry?’ I replied.

‘Ms Minaj is not available.’

‘Not even to say hello?’

‘NOT. AVAILABLE.’

My audience with her goons was over and I had to break the news to my sons that ‘Ms Minaj’ was too busy doing nothing to grant them a second of her precious time.

She proceeded to scowl her way through her entire time with AGT, on stage and off.

I thought of this when I watched Twitter blow up last night with Minaj’s angry rant about her supposed snub at the hands of the MTV Video Music Awards.

Nicki has been fired from at least 15 jobs for 'discourtesy to customers' and similar reasons. Now she's in what appears to be a Twitter tirade over Taylor Swift

The main thrust of her fury seemed to be that her Anaconda video should have been nominated for Video of the Year, and the reasons it hadn’t been were because she’s a) black and b) not skinny enough.

Her tweets exploded like toxic firecrackers.

‘If your video celebrates women with very slim bodies,’ she raged, ‘you will be nominated for vid of the year.’

‘If I was a different ‘kind’ of artist,’ she sneered, ‘Anaconda would be nominated for vid of the year as well.’

‘When the ‘other’ girls drop a video that breaks records and impacts culture, they get that nomination.’

And on and on she flounced.

The target of her tempestuous tirade was self-evidently Taylor Swift, who did get nominated in the Video of the Year category, along with 8 other nominations, and is both white and skinny.

Nicki's tweets exploded like toxic firecrackers

Taylor wasn’t happy, tweeting Minaj to say: ‘I’ve done nothing but love and support you. It’s unlike you to pit women against each other.’

Minaj reacted with a blatant lie.

‘Huh? U must not be reading my tweets. Didn’t say a word about u.’

It’s my turn to say HUH?

How many other skinny white women got nominated in the category?

Answer: zero.

Despite this, Taylor was promptly eaten alive on social media by the self-styled ‘Black Twitter’ – a very large, vocal and aggressive social media group of mainly black Americans who collectively leap on any perceived racial insult or bias to expel their indignation.

The reason Anaconda didn’t get nominated for Video of the Year is that it wasn’t as good as the others

By coincidence, I myself also ran foul of Black Twitter yesterday when I responded to the current popular activist hashtag ‘#BlackLivesMatter’ by tweeting: ‘#ALLLivesmatter.’

I was trending in America for several hours as Black Twitter vented its wrath at my supposed attempt to ‘delegitimize black lives’.

One person even dubbed me a ‘white supremacist’ as the bile spewed in, despite the fact that I spent much of my time at CNN - when I wasn’t confronting gun nuts – fighting for racial equality and justice for murdered young innocent black men like Trayvon Martin.

So I have every sympathy with Taylor, who did absolutely nothing wrong.

And I have no sympathy with Nicki Minaj, who emerges as a whiny brat that just doesn’t like losing.

Her charges of racism and big-bodyism are frankly laughable when you consider that three of the five nominations for Video of the Year are black artists.

And one of them is Beyonce, whose own body is far more aligned to the Minaj school of physical beauty than Taylor Swift’s.

Further, 43 of the entire list of 75 nominations for this year’s VMAs include black artists.

Oh, and Minaj herself gets three nominations in other categories.

So the central allegations are a load of old hogwash.

The reason your video didn’t get nominated for Video of the Year, Ms Minaj, is that it wasn’t as good as the others which did.

Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Bruno Mars, Ed Sheeran and Kendrick Lamar all made better ones.

That’s not my opinion because I’m white.

Or because I prefer skinny women to more voluptuous women (for the record, I don’t…).

It’s my opinion based on watching them all, and agreeing with the nominations.

In one final dig at Taylor Swift, Minaj moaned that whereas Taylor was applauded for leaving the music streaming company Spotify, she herself was ‘dragged’ for launching a rival called Tidal.

In one final dig at Taylor Swift, Minaj moaned that whereas Taylor was applauded for leaving the music streaming company Spotify, she herself was ‘dragged’ for launching a rival called Tidal.

What she failed to point out was that Taylor put her new album on Tidal, thus directly supporting it.

There’s no doubt that in the past, the music industry was, like Hollywood, rife with racism, both overt and covert.

There’s also no doubt that many of the world’s top music stars today are black, and command both the financial reward and respect that such status and talent deserves.

For Nicki Minaj, who is indisputably very talented, to play the race card just because her video didn’t get the nomination she wanted is a cheap piece of faux outrage deliberately designed to stir up unnecessary racial tension where it shouldn’t exist.