Danny Baker has been sacked from his show on BBC Radio 5 Live, after facing a huge backlash over a tweet about the royal baby announcement.
On Wednesday afternoon, Baker was panned for a tweet he posted about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s son, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor, which featured an image of a chimpanzee.
The post included a black and white photo showing a well-dressed man and woman holding hands with a suited chimpanzee, which he captioned: “Royal baby leaves hospital”.
After apologising and deleting the tweet following an immediate backlash, Danny announced on Thursday morning on Twitter that he had been fired.
“Just got fired from @bbc5live,” he wrote.
“For the record - it was red sauce. Always.”
The “red sauce” part of Danny’s tweet references a regular feature on his Saturday morning radio show, in which guests were invited to guess the preferred sauce of a particular celebrity.
A rep for the BBC also told HuffPost UK: “This was a serious error of judgment and goes against the values we as a station aim to embody.
“Danny’s a brilliant broadcaster but will no longer be presenting a weekly show with us.”
Within the hour, he posted a second tweet blasting the corporation, accusing them of “throwing him under the bus”.
He wrote: “The call to fire me... was a masterclass of pompous faux-gravity. Took a tone that said I actually meant that ridiculous tweet and the BBC must uphold blah blah blah.
“Literally threw me under the bus. Could hear the suits knees knocking. #Fuckem”
In his initial apology, Baker wrote: “Sorry my gag pic of the little fella in the posh outfit has whipped some up. Never occurred to me because, well, mind not diseased.
“Soon as those good enough to point out it’s possible connotations got in touch, down it came. And that’s it.”
He later added: “Once again. Sincere apologies for the stupid unthinking gag pic earlier. Was supposed to be joke about Royals vs circus animals in posh clothes but interpreted as about monkeys & race, so rightly deleted.
“Royal watching not my forte. Also, guessing it was my turn in the barrel.”
Prior to revealing that he’d been sacked, Baker had been tweeting about having journalists approach him at his home to comment on the controversy.
He wrote: “Here we go. Opened door, grinning Mail hack. ‘Do you think black people look like monkeys?’ Any other time you’d knock someone right on their arse for saying that. No mate. Gag pic. Posh baby chimp. Alerted to circs. Appalled. Deleted. Apologised. He asks again!
“Now Sky at the door. Would have used same stupid pic for any other Royal birth or Boris Johnson kid or even one of my own. It’s a funny image. (Though not of course in that context.) Enormous mistake, for sure. Grotesque. Anyway, here’s to ya Archie, Sorry mate.”