Phillip Schofield calls out Jeremy Clarkson’s apology to Meghan Markle

Sarah McKenna Barry

He objected to Clarkson’s comments about Top Gear.

Morning TV presenter Phillip Schofield has taken issue with an apology issued by Jeremy Clarkson regarding a now-deleted article about Meghan Markle.

The article was published in The Sun, and in it, the former Top Gear presenter says that he hates Meghan Markle “on a cellular level”.

Clarkson issued a public apology for it yesterday, and claimed that he had apologised via a letter to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.

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The apology has received plenty of air-time, with many commentators weighing in, including Phillip Schofield.

The ITV presenter began by praising some elements of Clarkson’s work, but objected to his comments about Top Gear. In Clarkson’s apology, he said that Top Gear never engaged in sexist jokes.

Dissecting the apology on This Morning, Phil said: “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.’

“But it’s almost as though [he said] ‘But we could have done if we wanted to, but we didn’t do that so give us points for that.”

Harry and Meghan have since addressed Clarkson’s apology, and revealed that the letter was only addressed to Prince Harry.

In a statement, they said: “On December 25, 2022, Mr Clarkson wrote solely to Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex. The contents of his correspondence were marked Private and Confidential.

A spokesperson for Prince Harry and Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex has responded to Jeremy Clarkson's Instagram apology posted earlier today (and addressed his claim that he emailed the couple in December): pic.twitter.com/DI6YdLIG5a

— Omid Scobie (@scobie) January 16, 2023

“While a new public apology has been issued today by Mr Clarkson, what remains to be addressed is his long standing pattern of writing articles that spread hate rhetoric, dangerous conspiracy theories, and misogyny.

“Unless each of his other pieces were also written “in a hurry”, as he states, it is clear that this is not an isolated incident shared in haste, but rather a series of articles shared in hate.”