The former Speaker of the House of Commons accepts he unashamedly pushed for what he believed in, but denies overstepping the mark by mistreating colleagues.

Speaking this evening on BBC’s The One Show, he said: ‘I have never bullied anyone, anywhere at any time in any way.

‘I’m passionate I thought I had a mandate to deliver change in the running of the chamber and the management of parliament and how we communicated with the country.

‘Now and again there were people who were less than cooperative, resisted change, tried to find ways around it or to thwart what I thought was not just my will by the will of most people in the house.

‘So of course I pressed for what I wanted, but pressing for what you want and pursuing an agenda for which you feel you’ve got a democratic mandate doesn’t in any sense amount to bullying.’

In his new autobiography, named ‘Unspeakable’, Bercow does not mince his words about former colleagues.

He described former Tory leader and Shadow Foreign Secretary William Hague as a ‘buttoned up, cold fish, mechanical, ex-teenage nerd.’

Bercow said David Cameron was ‘born with a silver trolley service in his mouth’ and called Theresa May ‘dull as dishwater’ and ‘as wooden as your average coffee table’.

When asked by BBC presenters Matt Baker and Alex Jones about the remarks, the ex-speaker said: ‘I don’t think it was a bit much at all, I was very candid in my portraits of all of those people.

‘In respect of Theresa May I did say that and I stand by it and I think it’s true and I thought people like the idea of politicians saying what they think not what they don’t think.

‘I did also say that she’s very public spirited and extremely hard working and dedicated to the national interest even if she doesn’t have a particularly clear view of what that is.

‘I’m not saying she’s a bad person, I think she’s a committed, hard working public spirited person. But I didn’t think that she was a successful prime minister.’

Tonight’s interview comes after a formal complaint was lodged by the Bercow’s former top aide Flord Lisvane, who handed a dossier of allegations to the Parliamentary Commissioner for Standards.

The documents are believed to accuse the ex-speaker of humiliating staff and using inappropriate language.

But Bercow has denied the allegations and said they have come at a ‘curious’ time, following suggestions he could have been in line for a peerage.

Some MPs including Labour’s Dawn Butler have even suggested denying the former speaker a peerage – as is tradition – is a form of bullying itself.

Complaints about Bercow’s behaviour were made in 2018 by his former private secretary Angus Sinclair.

He claimed he swore and shouted at him, and once even smashed a mobile phone in front of him – which Bercow denies.

Defending his record on this evening’s show, he said: ‘A number of somewhat upper crust, very posh, quite self important and entitled people who felt that the natural order of things was that they should not just have their say, but have their way, didn’t like it when I dared to say “no it may have been done that way before but we’re going to do it differently now”.’

He accepted that he had ‘made mistakes’ along the road, but said he was proud of ‘revitalising the chamber’ and getting more young people engaged in politics through his support of the UK Youth Parliament.

Bercow added: ‘None of us is without flaw, we all make mistakes, to err is human.

‘Could I have done better? No doubt. But am I basically proud of doing the best that I could do and being the best that I could be? No doubt.’