Piers Morgan found himself in a state of disbelief after defending Jeremy Clarkson over recent headlines about his former enemy’s position as host of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?.
On Wednesday, it was suggested the former Top Gear presenter had been dropped from the ITV quiz show over his recent newspaper column about Meghan Markle – although Clarkson has since insisted this is not the case.
While the two have not always been the best of pals – with Morgan claiming Clarkson once hit him in the head three times at an awards ceremony back in 2004 – he launched a defence of him on his TalkTV show on Wednesday.
Discussing Clarkson’s supposed “cancellation”, Morgan said: “My issue with the whole woke brigade is that even when you do issue a grovelling apology it’s never enough. The never accept it; they throw it back in your face.
“Is it right for a clumsy, stupid, bad joke – it was intended as a joke, no one supports it – but should he actually lose his ITV contract [over it]?”
He later added: “I can’t believe that I’m the one that’s got the scar on his head from his fist and I’m the one defending him!”
Towards the end of last year, the Clarkson’s Farm star faced a widespread backlash over a column he penned in The Sun about Meghan Markle, in which he described how much he “hated” her on a “cellular level”.
Alluding to a scene from Game Of Thrones, he added within the piece that he “dreamed” of the day she’d be “made to parade naked through the streets” while crowds “throw lumps of excrement at her”
The Sun and Clarkson both apologised for the piece, which sparked a record-breaking number of complaints to the press regulator Ipso, who have since launched an investigation.
ITV boss Dame Carolyn McCall said shortly after the controversy that his comments are “in no way endorsed by ITV” and there was “no place on ITV for the comments made in that article”.
She was asked about the matter again during an interview with Variety published on Wednesday, stating cryptically: “We’re contracted to this [upcoming series of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire], so we will do that. And then we have no future commitments, and we haven’t made any statements about that.”
While many media outlets interpreted this as a sign that Clarkson would not be returning to the ITV show, he put out a tweet on Wednesday evening insisting he had “not been sacked as host of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire”.
Clarkson initially responded to the backlash in December 2022 with a Twitter post on Twitter that stopped short of an actual apology.
However, almost a month later, Clarkson did apologise publicly, and claimed he’d also emailed the Duke and Duchess of Sussex over Christmas to say sorry to them privately.
A statement issued by the couple’s spokesperson in response to Clarkson’s now-deleted Instagram post stated that he had only written to Prince Harry, and not to his wife.