Comedian Jim Davidson has claimed that only people who don’t like him are upset by homophobic, sexist or racist jokes.

He told the Guardian that his jokes do not cause offence “to the people I’m telling them to”.

He said: “If you read them later or see it on a DVD then someone who doesn’t like me will take offence, but I don’t think a comedian in his wildest dreams is going to go out and try and upset an audience.

“On the other hand, if you’re saying gay people, black people, any people, fat people, ginger people should be protected from comedy, then it is a sad world when people can’t use common sense and courtesy and say if I take the piss out of that person he won’t like it.

“Maybe I will take the piss and he’ll love it.”

He also implied that he will never be allowed to repair his reputation, saying: “If I cured AIDS and fed Africa and ended Ebola and found that missing aeroplane I’d still be that horrible racist, sexist, homophobic comedian.

“By people, with respect, who haven’t seen me. Or are judging me from the past.”

Davidson has famously made a plethora of homophobic remarks, including saying to Brian Dowling on Hell’s Kitchen in 2007: “A lot of shirt-lifters have the same face, don’t they?”

More recently, he claimed that gay entertainers were more likely to be child abusers.

He said of Jimmy Saville: “A bloke who’s a loner dresses and acts like a nonce and thinks he is the most important person in the world.

“There are lots of them in showbiz. There seems to be more gay ones than straight, but that’s because there are probably more gays in showbiz than most professions.”