UKIP candidate and Nazi Pug Youtuber, Count Dankula, has said it’s okay for him to make a joke about raping women as he’s an “offensive comedian”.

The Coatbridge-based blogger, real name Mark Meechan, is fourth on Ukip’s candidate list in Scotland, and is unlikely to find himself in the European Parliament, but he was one of the stars of the party’s press conference on Thursday, being brought on stage by leader Gerard Batten.

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The night before he was filmed by Channel 4 News, telling an audience at a comedy night: “I’ve been a student. Most of you have probably been students. We were f**king poor, weren’t we?

“You couldn’t afford a hook up, so you had to rape. And it’s even worse if you’re a female student because not only are you poor but you’re always getting raped.”

On Twitter, Meechan said Channel 4 had edited the joke out of context and complained about the reporter asking him questions: “I am an offensive comedian, who tells offensive jokes, and she complained about being offended and she got really angry when my response was ‘I’m a comedian’.”

Meechan gained notoriety last year after he was fined £800 for filming his pet dog giving Nazi salutes in response to statements such “gas the Jews” and “sieg heil”.

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Fellow candidate Carl Benjamin, who goes by the name Sargon of Akkad, risks being deselected from his Swindon constituency because of his own remarks about rape.

In 2016, he responded to MP Jess Phillips’s tweet about sexual assault by replying: “I wouldn’t even rape you.”

During Thursday’s press conference, he accused media outlets of “smearing” him: “I’m not going to apologise for my crimes against political correctness, I hate political correctness.”

The party’s Swindon branch chairman Aubrey Attwater told the BBC he wanted to see Benjamin deselected as an MEP candidate: “Ukip Swindon wants absolutely nothing to do with Carl Benjamin or his websites.”