Thom Yorke claims Tony Blair advisers ‘tried to force him to meet the Prime Minister’ in 2003

A spokesperson for the former Prime Minister has dismissed the claims as 'nonsense'

Thom Yorke will provide the music for a Harold Pinter play (AP)

Thom Yorke has claimed Tony Blair’s advisers tried to “force” him to meet the then-Prime Minister over climate change issues in 2003.

In an interview with author George Monbiot for Telerama, the Radiohead frontman said he had been asking politicians to acknowledge the existence of climate change during his time as a spokesman for The Big Ask, in association with Friends of the Earth.

"It got into this big fight… [They said] ‘If you don’t agree to meet the Prime Minister, Friends of the Earth will be denied all access to him'," Yorke said, adding: “Because of the Iraq war, I didn’t want to do it. I felt it was morally unacceptable for me to be photographed with Blair".

A spokesperson for Blair told The Independent that "the suggestion is both preposterous and nonsense".

In the interview with Monbiot, Yorke also described how he became “unhealthily obsessed” over climate change, and still has the impression that he is not doing enough “at all”.

"In the ‘60s you could write songs that we like calls to arms, and it would work. Well, kind…ish. It’s much harder to do that now," he said.