Richard Desmond, boss of Channel 5 and The Daily Express has hit back at his Daily Mail rival Paul Dacre in a full frontal attack.

There is no love lost between the pair of Fleet Street heavy weights and now it seems their relationship has plunged into deeper dislike.

Dacre kicked off the latest row during his speech at the Leveson Inquiry into phone hacking after attacking Desmond's decision to withdraw from the self regulating PCC.

“How can you have self-regulation when a major newspaper group unilaterally withdraws from it?”

He added: “But let’s not forget that it was the political class in the form of the Blair Government – in the risible belief that he’d turn the Express Labour – which decided that Richard Desmond, the businessman who’d made his money from porn, was a fit and proper person to own a newspaper."

Now Desmond has hit back: "Dacre goes out slagging me off; he can go fuck himself. I'm not worried about statutory regulation. I'm regulated by Ofcom for TV. I'm happy with that," he told The Guardian on Monday.

Throughout the frank interview he apparently described Dacre as a "miserable, fat git" and a "fat butcher".

Desmond, who describes himself as a "socialist" says he is no longer interested in buying any News International titles because "the whole group is tarnished".

Over to you, Mr Dacre. The full interview can be read here.