Michelle Mone and Katie Hopkins in Twitter spat

ULTIMO boss Michelle Mone has rekindled a six-year-old war of words with former Apprentice candidate Katie Hopkins by exchanging vicious messages on social networking site Twitter.

Ultimo chief Michelle Mone hit out at Katie Hopkins. Picture: Complimentary

The pair clashed after Hopkins rejected the chance to work for Alan Sugar, leading to Mone branding the outspoken Hopkins as a ‘disgrace to businesswomen’ in 2007, and accusing her of trying to make a name for herself.

Mone, who built her lingerie empire from scratch, told Hopkins on The Apprentice spin-off show You’re Fired that she wouldn’t employ her, and that she suspected a lot of companies would do the same.

Hopkins sparked outrage last week when she appeared on ITV’s This Morning show and made a series of disparaging remarks about ‘lower-class’ children with names like Tyler and Chantelle, those with red hair, and overweight people.

Self-styled social commentator Katie Hopkins. Picture: Getty

And earlier this week, the Ultimo chief hit out at Hopkins, tweeting: “She won’t employ fat people,judges kids by their names&says ginger babies are hard to love,keep your vile opinions to yourself,Katie Hopkins.”

However, Hopkins replied with her own barbed comment, calling Mone the ‘large lady in the North’, writing: “More wisdom from the large lady of the bra factory in the North? As the tortoise said to the snail. Has anyone seen me shell?”

The Glasgow-born businesswoman then linked to an article reportedly showing a partly-clothed Hopkins in a field with a man, adding: “Remind me what you do again, apart from this?” to which Hopkins replied: “Less tweeting, more concentrating ‘shell. You just missed that important stitching on the under wire there now.”

However, Mone scored a small victory for the lower classes by telling Hopkins: “Leave my multi-million £ business out of it.. my Tweets are for all the Tyler’s, gingers and larger, highly employable people out there who you’ve put down.”

Hopkins invited criticism last week when she told Holly Willoughby and Philip Schofield on This Morning that she judged children based on their names, saying: “You can tell a great deal from a name. It’s a shortcut to finding out what class a child comes from, and makes me ask: ‘Do I want my children to play with them?’”

The self-styled social commentator was attacked on Twitter, with similarly outspoken commentator Caitlin Moran saying: “Torn between wanting to continue ignoring Katie Hopkins, and finding out where she lives and running her over with a tank.”