Robert Downey Jr has hit back at Krishnan Guru-Murthy over their recent disastrous meeting, labelling the interviewer “a bottom-feeding muckraker”.

The Iron Man star met Channel 4′s Krishnan while promoting his latest film The Avengers: Age Of Ultron last week, but things turned sour when questions came up about Robert’s past use of drugs and time in prison, leading to him walking out of the interview.

Now, he has told The Howard Stern Show of what went on: “I wish I left sooner. First of all, I don’t even know that guy’s name. But I know that he pulled the same garbage on Tarantino, and Tarantino stayed in his chair and lit him up for five minutes.”

Krishnan Guru-Murthy
Krishnan Guru-Murthy (Dominic Lipinski/PA)

He was referring to an interview Krishnan had done with Quentin Tarantino about his film Django Unchained where the director had become offended about questions over his use of violence on screen.

Robert continued: “I’m one of those guys who always assumes the social decorum isn’t in play and we’re promoting a superhero movie and a lot of kids are going to see it.

“It has nothing to do with your (Murthy’s) creepy, dark agenda, that I’m all of a sudden feeling obligated to accommodate your weirdo s**t.

“I am completely unevolved when it comes down to civil boundaries like, ‘You know what, you’re weirding me out. You are a bottom-feeding muckraker’. This was the first interview of the day, I didn’t know what to expect.”

He went on: “What I have to do in the future is… distance myself from this clown, otherwise I’m probably going to put hands on somebody and then there’s a real story.”