Jeremy Clarkson has been making headlines for all the wrong reasons after writing a column about Meghan Markle.
His piece, published in The Sun, sparked a record number of complaints to Britain's press council, saw Prince Harry and Meghan call out the newspaper for allowing misogynistic comments, and led to Clarkson apologising publicly — not once but twice.
So how did this all start and how have Meghan and Harry, and the public, responded?
It all started with column on December 16
Before we get to the column, cast your mind back to December and the release of Harry and Meghan's Netflix documentary.
In the series, they spoke out against the tabloid media and talked about their struggles with mental health.
In the days after the first three episodes were released Clarkson, who authors a regular column in The Sun, wrote an article on the duchess.
In what he later described as a piece written "in a hurry", Clarkson said he hated Meghan "on a cellular level".
In fact, he compared his hatred of the Duchess of Sussex to that of serial killer Rose West.
"At night, I'm unable to sleep as I lie there, grinding my teeth and dreaming of the day when she [Meghan] 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," he wrote.
"Everyone who's my age thinks the same way.
"But what makes me despair is that younger people, especially girls, think she's pretty cool.
"They think she was a prisoner of Buckingham Palace, forced to talk about nothing but embroidery and kittens."
And then came the apologies ...
It is fair to say many members of the British public were not having a bar of Clarkson's column, with a record 25,000 complaints made to Britain's Independent Press Standards Organisation (IPSO)
Three days after the column was published, Clarkson took to Twitter to make his first apology.
Even Clarkson's daughter Emily distanced herself, saying on Instagram: "I stand against everything that my dad wrote."
With public outrage mounting, The Sun removed the column from its website.
The newspaper said it regretted publishing the column and was "sincerely sorry", but it did little for Harry and Meghan, who branded the apology a "PR stunt".
But it wasn't just the public and the royal couple speaking out — the column had also united members of parliament.
More than 60 politicians from all sides signed a letter to The Sun's editor condemning the choice to publish "violent misogynistic language", and called for action to ensure "no article like this is ever published again".
Fast forward several weeks to this Monday, Clarkson apologised again, this time on Instagram.
In a lengthy post, he said he revisited the article after it was published and "couldn't believe" what he read. He said he emailed Harry and Meghan on Christmas Day to apologise.
Clarkson said he was not sure if he could move on, noting it was "hard to be interesting and vigilant at the same time", but would try.
But the apology did not go far enough for the duke and duchess.
Hours later, a spokesman for Harry and Meghan said it was clear the column was not an "isolated incident".
Sorry not enough for some
A commitment from The Sun to shifting its coverage and ethical standards would be a true apology.
That's according to a spokesman for Harry and Meghan, who said they were "not holding our breath".
"While the public absolutely deserves the publication’s regrets for their dangerous comments, we wouldn’t be in this situation if The Sun did not continue to profit off of and exploit hate, violence and misogyny," the spokesman said.
In an interview aired on January 8, sandwiched between Clarkson's first and second apologies, Harry called the former Top Gear host's words "hurtful" and "cruel".
"It also encourages other people around the UK and around the world, men particularly, to go and think that it's acceptable to treat women that way," Harry said, in the ITV interview ahead of the release of his autobiography Spare.
After the second apology a spokesperson for Harry and Meghan said one issue had not been addressed.
"What remains to be addressed is his long-standing pattern of writing articles that spread hate rhetoric, dangerous conspiracy theories, and misogyny," the spokesperson said.
"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."
Clarkson is facing fallout from the column, with Variety reporting that Amazon Prime Video will not be working with Clarkson beyond the seasons of The Grand Tour and Clarkson's Farm that have already been commissioned.
Clarkson also presents Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? on ITV.
ABC with Reuters
