Irish-American comedian Des Bishop claimed he was bullied by convicted criminal, John Gotti's son while at school in Queens, during Brendan O'Connor's Cutting Edge on Wednesday night.

Des told Brendan that “from bullying campaigns, I realised I was bullied,” and did not realised he had been a victim of bullying until his 30s.

He recalled his harrowing experience of being bullied during his in St. Francis' preparatory school in Queens, and says it's part of the reason he moved to Ireland:“Not that I talk about it much publically, but I had like a major bullying incident when I was thirteen going on fourteen, which is kinda why I came to Ireland.

“When I was in St. Francis preparatory school in Queens this Italian kid fancied my girlfriend, and we were friends and then he turned on me, and I didn’t know why, until years later I didn’t know why. But he was in with the Howard beach crew, which was all the Italian guys, and one of them was John Gotti’s son, he was a year older than me.

"If people don’t know who John Gotti was, he was like the teflon don, the head of the Gambino crime family in New York and at that time he was literally the king of New York - people might know that from the Fun Lovin Criminals song.

"Anyway, long story short, these guys.. They were involved in like intimidating me and threatening me and one time we were at this basketball game, and like everybody was there and they made me leave.

"There was other kids from my neighbourhood there that weren’t in my school, and I asked them to back me, but everyone was so afraid of John Gotti - the name Gotti, that they were like ‘No, bro, you’re on your own.’

And I had to do this like walk of shame out of the venue and this little Italian kid - not the Gotti guy, for the record, cause he’s the only person i’ve named so in case there’s any lawyers involved - this little Italian kid, he was like watching me, and laughing at me, and it was so demeaning."

Des said later that year, his close friends excluded him from their friend group.

Later, his mother went to the school about what was happening, but they did not take her seriously, asking: “Have you seen how small this kid is?”

Des continued: “As if I should have just dealt with it by knocking him out, you know?”

The comedian admitted that at times, he becomes resentful over how he was treated because he failed for subjects at school as a result: “I failed at school, I always joked that it was alcohol, I failed four subjects and all that stress was definitely part of it."