Idiot who tried to embarrass Gina humiliates himself.

Serial attention seeker Dan Ilic has had his latest bad-taste venture backfire.

The Sydney ‘comedian’ raised more than 30-thousand dollars to try to embarrass Gina Rinehart by posting a contentious and unflattering portrait of the mining magnate across New York’s Times Square billboards.

It followed a campaign by supporters of Mrs Rinehart to try to have the Vincent Namatjira’s painting pulled down from the National Gallery in Canberra.

Ilic jumped on the bandwagon trying to aggravate the situation by crowd sourcing the money to pay for the New York stunt.

But overnight, his campaign fell to pieces.

It appears, he’d failed to properly consult the artist who refused to be involved.

Namatjira’s agent claimed he ‘never gave approval and nor was it ever properly sought’ by Ilic to use the image.

‘He would rather it does not go ahead’.

A smug Ilic who normally craves attention could not be contacted but later published a statement overnight:

Thanks for your generous support of this project, however this event will not being going ahead as per the artist's preferences.

More than 700 donors will now have to be paid back.

Ilic, who calls himself an “investigative humourist”, started losing support for the caper late last week with claims on radio that he was trying to “emotionally bash up a woman” and “aggressively bully” Mrs Rinehart.

Broadcaster Kyle Sandilands told his top-rating radio show that “the person behind this was an arsehole who seems to get some kick out of trying to fat-shame a woman”.

Sandilands added, “this is just nasty and personal and the work of a total f-wit”.

Ilic was supported initially by Channel 10’s The Project which invited him on as a guest for a largely unchallenged interview.

But even fans of the show bombarded TEN’s Facebook page with criticism saying that the idea was ‘mean spirited’ and ‘the money could be better spent helping people in need’.