Jeremy Clarkson appeared to poke fun at Eddie Izzard’s preferred pronouns while promoting the new season of Who Wants to be a Millionaire.
At the ITV Entertainment Schedule Launch in London on Tuesday (30 August), Clarkson was asked by host Joel Dommett who would be appearing in the upcoming series.
He replied: “Eddie Izzard obviously is very bright so he was fun.”
In 2020, Izzard, who describes herself as being “gender fluid”, requested to be referred to by the pronouns “she/her”.
After realising his error, Clarkson botched his attempt to correct himself, saying: “She, them, it. I don’t know what you say! She? She?”
According to the Daily Mail, which was in attendance, the crowd mistakenly corrected the presenter with “they”, to which he responded: “They… whatever he is. I knew there was a word. There was a pronoun I had forgotten. They were very good.”
During the event, the former Top Gear host also admitted he didn’t know who many of the contestants involved in the celebrity version of his game show were.
“Honestly, I much prefer doing the ordinary one,” Clarkson said. “With the celebrity one, I don’t have a f***ing clue who half the people are. I have to read up on who they are.”
Earlier this month, Izzard shared the unexpected way she decided to reveal she had changed her pronouns to she/her.
In December 2020, Izzard appeared on Sky Arts series Portrait Artist of the Year, in which the show’s host Stephen Mangan and contestants referred to Izzard using feminine pronouns.
“Some young artists painting me, they ask me, like a coffee thing, they said, ‘She/her or he/him?’” Izzard recalled. “I was wearing a dress and I’m based as a trans woman now, so, ‘She/her, I’ll have a latte.’ It was that kind of lack of stress.”
The comedian said following the episode’s broadcast, “in two days in America and Britain, where I’m best known, all my pronouns were changed,” which she called “fantastic, a great honour”.
