Founder and leader of Lighthouse Chapel, Bishop Dag Heward-Mills, says most women who were virgins after they had reached a certain age were in fact ‘ugly'.

The Bishop’s controversial statement was made in a sermon recorded years ago which has been re-shared on Twitter.

He said, “You ladies who are virgins it’s because you were not beautiful when you were at a certain age.

“Do you know what an ugly duckling is? Yeah, some of you were ugly ducklings, it is as time has gone by and you’ve been able to do your hair and so on that, you are a little improved,” he said.

He said this as an admonishment to virgins who were looking down at non-virgins for losing their virginity out of wedlock.

According to him, those virgins are still virgins because they weren’t pretty enough to capture the attention of the opposite sex, whereas the non-virgins lost their virginity because their beauty attracted the opposite sex.

Thus he advised his congregation not to judge non-virgins for losing their virginity.