ITV's boss has spoken out on Jeremy Clarkson's position on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? following backlash to his 'awful' Meghan Markle comments. The former Top Gear presenter has come under fire over his recent column for The Sun newspaper.
Clarkson, 62, said he feels "hate" for Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, and dreams of seeing her publicly humiliated. The newspaper column has since become the Independent Press Standards Organisation’s (Ipso) most complained-about article, the regulator said on Tuesday (December 20).
Ipso said the piece, which was removed from The Sun’s website on Monday at Clarkson's request, had received more than 17,500 complaints as of 9am on Tuesday – rising to 20,800 by 5pm. At the time of writing a fresh update on the number of complaints hadn't been shared.
A spokesman for the regulator said: “Ipso has received more than 20,800 complaints about an opinion piece on the Duchess and Duke of Sussex written by Jeremy Clarkson and published by The Sun on Friday, December 16, 2022. We will follow our usual processes to examine the complaints we have received. This will take longer than usual because of the volume of complaints."
Now, ITV boss Kevin Lygo had said Clarkson’s comments about the Duchess of Sussex were "awful" but "at the moment" the broadcaster plans to keep him as host of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? Speaking at a Broadcasting Press Guild event in London on Tuesday, Mr Lygo, managing director of ITV Studios, said: "I would say what he writes in a newspaper column… We have no control over what he says.
"We hire him as a consummate broadcaster of the most famous quiz on television, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? So it’s not quite in our wheelhouse but I don’t know what he was thinking when he wrote that. It was awful."
Asked if ITV will keep Clarkson as host of the quiz show, a position he inherited from Chris Tarrant in 2018, Mr Lygo said: “Yes, at the moment we are.” Then, when asked if Clarkson represents ITV’s values, Mr Lygo replied: "No, of course he doesn’t in that instance.”
On Monday, Clarkson responded to the controversy, writing on Twitter: "Oh dear. I’ve rather put my foot in it. In a column I wrote about Meghan, I made a clumsy reference to a scene in Game of Thrones and this has gone down badly with a great many people. I’m horrified to have caused so much hurt and I shall be more careful in future."
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