Sinead O’Connor claims Prince punched her before she ran to hide behind a tree in shocking Good Morning Britain interview

Sinead O’Connor has claimed that Prince once “tried to beat her up.”

Speaking on Good Morning Britain, the singer alleged that the late star, who wrote her hit single Nothing Compares 2 U, “punched” her when she visited him at his home in Los Angeles.

“We did meet once but we didn’t get on very well,” O’Connor, 52, told hosts Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid, adding: “We tried to beat each other up.

“It was more he tried to beat me up and I was defending myself.”

O’Connor described the incident as “a very frightening experience” that was “not a joke at all.”

“He summoned me to his house one night and I foolishly went alone, not knowing where I was,” she said, adding that she believed Prince was “uncomfortable with the fact that [she] wasn’t a protege of his.”

She added: “I had just recorded the song and he was wanting me to be a protege of his.

“He ordered that I don’t swear any more in my interviews and Irish people swear all the time. Of course I told him where he could go.

“He punched me. He went for me and then he went upstairs and he got a pillow and he had something hard in the pillow.”

“I ran out of his house, I’m hiding behind a tree, he’s going this way in his car.

"We meet on the highway in Malibu at 5 o’clock in the morning - I’m spitting at him, he’s trying to punch me.”

She went on to allege that the singer, who died in April 2016, was “into some pretty dark drugs at the time.”

Standard Online has contacted Prince’s estate for further comment.

Good Morning Britain airs weekdays on ITV from 6am.