David Letterman condemned for 'disgusting, cruel' interviews with female celebrities

David Letterman has come under fire for what social media users are calling "cruel, disgusting and awful" treatment of female celebrities in a series of resurfaced interviews from his late-night talk show. 

Christina Aguilera, Jennifer Anniston, Lindsay Lohan, Madonna and Paris Hilton all fall victim to either Letterman's intrusive line of questioning or invasion of their personal space in the archival footage, which has prompted outrage online. 

In one particularly brazen moment from his 1998 interview with Jennifer Anniston, Letterman derails the conversation by moving close to the Friends star, clasping his hand around her neck and sucking on a strand of her hair. 

Anniston recoils when the broadcaster advances on her, crying out in shock before asking him "What are you doing?" 

Anniston appears to try and laugh off the incident when Letterman hands her a tissue to wipe his saliva off her hair. 

Earlier in the week, Letterman's interview with Lindsay Lohan from 2013 was dubbed "horrifying" for the host's ruthless grilling of the actress and singer about her substance abuse issues. 

"Aren't you supposed to be in rehab right now?" Letterman begins, before continuing to probe the troubled star about what it was she was addicted to and why she thought this time in rehab would be different. 

Lohan's attempts to move the interview on fall on deaf ears, and at one stage she grabs Letterman's notes off him, telling him he's "so mean" for "making a joke" out of her situation. 

Six years earlier, Letterman interrogated Paris Hilton about her stint in prison with a similar lack of awareness for her comfort levels, telling the hotel heiress "this is all I want to talk about" when she appeared on the show in 2007. 

Despite Hilton's assertion that her time behind bars was a "very traumatic experience" that she "didn't want to talk about anymore," Letterman pressed on, asking about the food she ate and who she met in jail. 

"You're hurting my feelings, can we please stop talking about it?" Hilton eventually pleaded. 

In 2004, Letterman told Christina Aguilera she looked "terribly exotic" before questioning her about where exactly all her piercings were. 

Letterman began to focus the entire interview around the singer's piercings, including how old she was when she got her first, and how she would close up the holes left by them, prompting her to reply "Oh God, maybe we should change the subject". 

Another clip from 1994 shows Letterman pressuring Madonna into kissing a man in the audience, to which she replies "I can't". 

"A lot of people would cave into the pressure and say 'oh alright' and go out there and get it over with," Letterman replies, prompting Madonna to call him a sick f**k. 

The late show host's behaviour in the interviews saw him dubbed "a sexist dick," and "vile" - among other things - by appalled Twitter users. 

Letterman has previously made apologies for being at the helm of a toxic work environment that included sexual harassment and inappropriate relationships with staff. He has not yet publicly commented on the latest controversy the old interviews have stirred up.