Dapper Laughs says he felt 'bullied' over ditching his character

Dapper Laughs creator Daniel O'Reilly says he feels his freedom of speech has been "100%" violated by a media campaign against his act.

He says he felt "bullied" into getting rid of the character over claims he made rape jokes - claims he denies.

In our exclusive interview, O'Reilly insists he wants to "continue to entertain my fans".

It's the first time the comedian's spoken since saying he's bringing back Dapper Laughs.

He says the backlash against Dapper Laughs has made him "be careful" about what he says.

Newsbeat asked him if he felt he'd lost his right to speak freely, even if people found what he said offensive.

"Freedom of speech. I understand with freedom of speech comes consequences. Again, I feel like I was bullied out of it."

He says he felt his freedom of speech had been violated and believes his comedy would be treated differently now in light of the Charlie Hebdo shootings earlier this year.

"If you take the whole situation that happened over those three days (when O'Reilly killed off his Dapper Laughs character) and done that now, a week after that situation (Charlie Hebdo) I think the outcome would have been completely different.

"If I wanted to at the time I could have tried to rally all of my fans together and say, 'look at what they're doing to me, come on help', but I didn't."

He says he killed off Dapper Laughs last November after getting "a lot of hate" towards his family from people online.

He says he was "forced" to stop playing the character and announce his decision in an interview with Newsnight.

O'Reilly says he was shocked at the media response to Dapper Laughs and how newspapers were "allowed to fabricate and make up stuff and create a mass hysteria point of view around the character".

He says: "I felt completely bullied out of it. I come from quite a rough background, I don't mind saying it.

"I'm working class, I know that my humour caters for that type of lad, or whatever, humour.

"But the majority of people at my shows are women. The audience is more heavy [to] women. The audience is mixed, so I understand the upper class - different types of people - like different types of humour. They're not going to like my humour, I understand that.

"But they've bullied me out of continuing to do what I wanted to do. And when they portrayed my humour to the masses, to the UK, they done it in a way where they showed everything's falling apart, the rape joke and everything like that.

"Yeah, I felt bullied, I felt it was unfair really, to be honest."

He also says he had people "wishing that my dad had cancer and would die", and reveals his father was actually battling cancer at the time.

O'Reilly also says reporters were "going to my mum's house, banging on the door, with cameras, going to my sister's kid's school, with cameras and my sister's house with cameras".

But not everybody agrees with Daniel's brand of comedy. 20-year-old Amy, a student in Sheffield, told Newsbeat Dapper Laughs is "dangerous".

"The way that is on Facebook, and everywhere, like it's so big on social media, I think that's one of the most dangerous things about it.

"People see that every single day, it's like normality being misogynistic about women. I don't think freedom of speech comes into that. I think it's very dangerous and perpetuates rape culture."

Meanwhile, O'Reilly says claims he made jokes about rape are wrong.

"So let's talk about this then. This for me is one of the most frustrating parts of the drama that happened, because I've got people coming up to me in the street, and people writing on social media.

"There's millions of people in the UK who think they know who Dapper Laughs is, that have never seen any of his videos. They haven't watched any of it. They've just heard that one joke and they've cast their opinion on that."

O'Reilly says he doesn't make jokes about rape and has "never found rape funny".

The Londoner says he didn't kill off Dapper Laughs to create publicity.

"It wasn't a stunt. It wasn't a stunt at all. Like I just explained to you, everything was too much. That was the only way that I could stop it. And it did, it stopped it, it stopped the drama.

"Then, do you know what? I had time to settle down, and calm down and think about what had happened.

"[It was] after I'd started receiving other petitions, 30, 40,000 people signing petitions on my Facebook to bring me back, and a lot of my fans disgusted that I even contemplated giving up what I loved doing, and when I thought about the hard work of what we'd achieved last year, including two sold out tours.

"You know what I mean? I wrote and co-produced my own TV show, I got a single to 15 in the charts. Do you know what I mean? I headlined at V Festival comedy tent twice, didn't receive any complaints.

"And to think all of that because of what the media decided they wanted to communicate to the public, I had to stop it.

"I sat down and thought about it, I thought to myself, 'Nah, I'm not going to be bullied out of what I like doing. Let's bring it back, let's carry on.'"

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