ITV’s head of media and entertainment has called Jeremy Clarkson’s remarks regarding the Duchess of Sussex in a column for the Sun “awful.”
As the host of the game show Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, Kevin Lygo stated that there were “at the time” no plans to replace him.
He claimed that Mr. Clarkson’s remarks did not reflect the principles of ITV.
After writing on Friday that he “hated [Meghan] on a cellular level,” Clarkson received more than 20,000 complaints to the press regulator.
At Clarkson’s request, the column has since been taken down from the Sun’s website and replaced with a tweet in which he expresses his horror at having “caused so much hurt.”
Jeremy Clarkson called a reference to a moment from Game of Thrones he made in a message to his followers on Monday “clumsy” in the message.
The hurtful “horrified” Meghan column by Clarkson
Tuesday in London, Mr. Lygo said he had “no control” over what Mr. Clarkson wrote in his newspaper columns. He was speaking at a Broadcasting Press Guild event.
We recruit him as a consummate broadcaster of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, the most well-known game show on television, he added.
“Although it’s outside of our purview, I’m not sure what he had in mind when he wrote it. It was terrible.
Demands an apology
In a letter to Sun editor Victoria Newton, Conservative MP Caroline Nokes demanded that Mr. Clarkson be held accountable and that the duchess receive an “unreserved apology.”
The letter has been signed by more than 60 MPs. John Nicolson, an SNP member of the Digital, Culture, Media and Sport Committee, has written to Dame Carolyn McCall, the head of ITV, requesting that Mr. Clarkson be fired as the quiz show’s host.
The broadcaster of Clarkson’s Farm and The Grand Tour, where the host co-stars with James May and Richard Hammond, Mr. Nicolson claimed to have also written to Amazon.
The late Caroline Flack’s mother denounced the remarks in a call to Shelagh Fogarty’s LBC show on Monday.
Christine Flack reacted by claiming it had “upset her so much that Jeremy Clarkson was not only permitted to think that, but to put it in print,” in response to Mr. Clarkson’s statement that he wanted to see the duchess humiliated.
The coroner determined that Caroline Flack’s death in February 2020 was a suicide.
Her tragedy “was played out in the national news,” which was tremendously painful for her, according to an inquiry in August 2020.
In the first installment of his column, Clarkson wrote: “At night, I’m unable to sleep as I lie there, gnashing my teeth and dreaming of the day when she [Meghan] is ordered to parade nude through the streets of every town in Britain while the masses cry ‘Shame!’ and throw chunks of feces at her.
He said,
“Everyone my age thinks the same way. But the fact that younger people, particularly females, think she’s cool makes me despondent. They believe she was held captive by Buckingham Palace and made to speak only about stitching and cats.
Following the Thursday publication of the final three episodes of the Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan, his piece was published.
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