Paul Weller labels The Cure's Robert Smith a 'fat c**t' in interview

'He's a f***ing knob end'

Paul Weller has launched a brutal personal attack on The Cure's Robert Smith, labelling him a "f***ing fat c**t" in an interview.

He was speaking to Record Collector for a special edition of the magazine in honour of the former Jam singer when he made the remark.

Weller seemed to take issue with the suggestion from the interviewer that one of the songs on Noel Gallagher's upcoming album sounds suspiciously like The Cure's 1980 classic A Forest. According to the magazine, Weller responded to this observation with a mixture of “incredulity and revulsion”.

“Really??!” the singer-songwriter continued. “I can’t fucking stand them. F***ing fat c**t, with his lipstick and all that bollocks. He is my age as well, isn’t he?”

Weller added: “He’s a f***ing knob end. I don’t like him. There you go. There’s someone I would work with. I’d f***ing slap him, or something.”

Robert Smith of The Cure (Getty)

The Cure and The Jam's linked music history

It is not quite clear why Weller has such a passionate dislike of the Cure frontman, but according to Louder Sounds, The Jam inadvertently helped Smith's band during the recording of The Cure's debut album Three Imaginary Boys.

Back in 2004, Smith told Rolling Stone: "The Jam were recording their album during the day, and we used to sneak in at night and use their equipment – we knew the bloke who was looking after it – to record our album. We just borrowed tape and stuff."

Or it could be that Weller is still upset over a comment Smith made in 1985, when he mentioned Weller during an interview in which he said that punk wasn’t a political movement. He said:

"It [punk] later became that, because people wanted it to be seen as a movement."

Smith claimed that people were dissatisfied with listening to “bands like Yes and Genesis“, and instead “wanted to hear something they could dance to”.

“Even people who think they’re socially aware and lend their names to things, like Paul Weller and stuff…  I mean it does no good at all, ultimately,” Smith explained. “Because you’d have to be particularly stupid to believe someone like Paul Weller.

“You’d have to be particularly stupid to believe someone like me.”

Both bands were discovered by the same A&R scout, Chris Parry, who went on to sign The Jam to Polydor in 1977 and The Cure to his own label, Fiction Records, in 1978.

Smith has not yet responded to Weller's recent comments.