Luke Pritchard, lead singer of UK band The Kooks, has drawn the ire of a million teenage girls by getting into a war of words with One Direction's Liam Payne.

Pritchard, in response to a tweet from a fan saying that she likes both The Kooks and One Direction, said that he didn't want any fans of the multi-platinum selling boyband to follow him.

"Do not like what I do", he wrote on Twitter. "I'd rather anyone who likes One Direction never follow me. You literally have no idea how upset I am." Pritchard apparently saw sense shortly afterwards as the tweet has since been deleted, but not before 1D's Liam Payne had a chance to chime in.

"Sad thing is @lukekook we are/where fans of your band, nice one man verbally attacking your own fans how very rock and roll of you ;) (sic)", Payne scribbled on the micro-blogging website.

Apparently that was all that's need to launch a counter-attack by legions of hormonally-imbalanced teenagers, as fans sent a barrage of abuse to Pritchard. He initially began retweeting them but has since deleted everything.

"How can you be a fan of something that has no life. I honestly feel so depressed that you are into The Kooks." (sic).

Pritchard then attempted to draw a line through the incident with the below tweet but we reckon he'll be dealing with the fallout of pissing off fans of the world's most popular boyband for quite a few weeks yet.