Controversial chart star Morrissey has branded the Duke of Cambridge a "thickwit" for taking part in a hunting trip the day before launching a campaign to save endangered animals.
William joined his father in a video message yesterday calling on the world to tackle the illegal wildlife trade and save endangered rhinos, elephants and tigers, but was criticised after it emerged he spent the day before hunting wild boar and stags on a private estate in Spain with Prince Harry.
Morrissey, who is a committed vegetarian, lambasted William in a statement on a fan site.
Morrissey called William a 'thickwit'
The former Smiths frontman said: "Although William's speech (no doubt written by his publicity aides at Clarence House) will concentrate on endangered species, William is too thickwit to realise that animals such as tigers and rhino are only driven to near extinction because people who are precisely like himself and his brother have shot them off the map - all in the name of sport and slaughter."
The musician, whose former band released an album called Meat is Murder, macabrely added that the "the rationalists amongst us" could "only pray to God that their hunting guns backfire in their faces".
Prince William, who has regularly hunted on the 37,000 acre Finca La Gargata estate in Cordoba, was back in London on Sunday to launch the campaign, which bears the slogan ‘Let’s Unite for Wildlife.’
54-year-old Morrissey, who previously poked fun at the royal family in the album title track The Queen Is Dead, has long campaigned for animal rights.
Last year, he donated £10,000 to an anti-foie gras campaign after being paid the money by Channel 4, which had used one of his songs without permission in an advert for a Gordon Ramsay show.
He famously left the stage at California's Coachella Festival five years ago after complaining about the smell of burgers, telling the crowd he could smell ''burning flesh''.