British TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson stokes complaints after Meghan 'hate' article

LONDON – British television presenter Jeremy Clarkson faced a barrage of complaints on Monday after a huge backlash to a newspaper column, in which he said he “hated” Prince Harry’s wife Meghan Markle.

In the article for British tabloid The Sun last Friday, Clarkson wrote that he dreamed of the day “when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant, ‘Shame!’ and throw lumps of excrement at her”.

The outspoken 62-year-old presenter insisted that he had been referencing the television series Game Of Thrones (2011 to 2019).

“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,” wrote the former host of motoring show Top Gear (2002 to present) on Twitter.

“I’m horrified to have caused so much hurt and I shall be more careful in future.”

Britain’s Independent Press Standards Organisation said it had so far received more than 12,000 complaints over the article as of 1700 GMT on Monday (1am on Tuesday, Singapore time), nearly as much as it received in total for 2021.

The article, which was later pulled from The Sun website, was written in response to the

couple’s recent Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan.

In it, they accuse the voracious British tabloid press of racism, of trying to “destroy” Meghan and of contributing to her miscarriage through a targeted campaign fuelled by palace briefings.

Prime Minister Rishi Sunak warned public figures that “language matters”, while Clarkson’s daughter, Emily, said in an online post that she was “against everything that my dad wrote”.

High-profile critics of Clarkson, who enjoyed global success with Top Gear, and his article included Scotland First Minister Nicola Sturgeon, author Philip Pullman and London Mayor Sadiq Khan. AFP