Phillip Schofield has found his own remarks coming under fire as he discussed Jeremy Clarkson's new apology on This Morning. It was revealed on Monday (January 16) that the former Top Gear host sent a Christmas Day apology to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle following his widely condemned column in The Sun.
The piece, in which the 62-year-old TV presenter said he dreamed of the duchess being paraded through British towns and publicly shamed, became the Independent Press Standards Organisation’s (Ipso) most complained-about article after its publication. Jeremy said his language was "disgraceful" and he is "profoundly sorry", but the Duke and Duchess of Sussex have responded and said he did not address "his long-standing pattern of writing articles that spread hate rhetoric, dangerous conspiracy theories and misogyny".
The Sun later apologised and said it regretted the publication of the column which last week surpassed more than 25,000 Ipso complaints. Then in a lengthy statement on his verified Instagram account at the start of the week, the Jeremy said he emailed the couple on Christmas Day to say his language in the column had been "disgraceful" and he was "profoundly sorry".
Jeremy, who referenced England football captain Harry Kane’s World Cup penalty miss, said he will "try" to be "interesting and vigilant" at the same time in future columns. His statement concluded: "Over the last 30 years, I have written very nearly 5,000 newspaper and magazine columns, so it was inevitable that one day, I’d do a Harry Kane and sky one of the damn things. Which is what happened with the piece about Meghan.
"So can I move on now? Not sure. It’s hard to be interesting and vigilant at the same time. You never hear peals of laughter coming from a health and safety seminar. But I promise you this, I will try. Who knows? Very soon now I shall be a grandfather, so in future, maybe I’ll just write about that."
It has since been reported that Amazon Prime have 'parted ways' with the TV star. During Tuesday's episode of This Morning, Phillip and co-host Holly Willoughby spoke about the latest development in Jeremy's saga with the duke and duchess, who appeared to reject the star's apology by issuing their own statement.
While Holly argued it was "weird" of Jeremy to address the apology to Prince Harry, Phillip interjected as he said: "We don't know." He went on to say perhaps he had emailed the former senior royal but had addressed the apology to both.
Phillip also commented that he "had apologised" but pointed out that parts of his statement hadn't been well received. "He also goes on to talk about the fact – and I like Jeremy, he’s a very clever broadcaster, he’s a great journalist – but he then says on Top Gear, 'We never made jokes about women parking'," Phillip stated.
The 60-year-old then continued: "But it’s almost as though [he’s saying], 'But we could have done if we wanted to, but we didn’t do that so give us points for that.'"
And This Morning viewers were soon responding to Phillip's conclusion. @AnneCHenderson1 remarked: "Philip Schofield said Jeremy Clarkson is clever. I disagree. Without emotional intelligence and integrity Clarkson’s behaviour is unforgivable." @FlopsyPickle shared: "Surprise surprise Phil really likes Jeremy Clarkson #ThisMorning." @TellyVsPodcast fumed "Philip really likes Clarkson… they are as bad as one another #ThisMorning."
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