The next series of the television quizshow, Who Wants To Be a Millionaire? may be the last hosted by Jeremy Clarkson after his controversial comments about the Duchess of Sussex in a newspaper column.
Carolyn McCall, the chief executive of ITV which broadcasts the show, said the channel had “no future commitments” to renew Clarkson’s contract beyond a forthcoming series which has already been recorded.
Her comments, made in an interview given to Variety, come two months after Clarkson was forced to apologise over an article in the Sun in which he said he was dreaming of the day the Duchess of Sussex was made to parade naked in public while people threw excrement at her.
The Sun took the article off its website and apologised to readers. The press regulator, Ipso, received more than 25,000 complaints, and earlier this month launched an investigation.
McCall told Variety that the broadcaster had a contractual commitment to Clarkson for the next series of Millionaire, but nothing was confirmed beyond that.
“We have a contract. We’re contracted to this [season], so we will do that. And then we have no future commitments. And we haven’t made any statements about that,” she said.
After McCall’s comments were published, a spokesperson for ITV said neither the show nor Clarkson had been cancelled. “ITV is contractually committed to a further series of Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? (which has now been recorded),” the spokesperson said.
“There are no further commissioning commitments beyond that currently as is typical with such shows where we make commissioning decisions on a series by series basis.
“Therefore for the avoidance of doubt neither Who Wants to Be a Millionaire? nor Jeremy Clarkson have been cancelled.”
The popular quizshow launched in 1998, with Chris Tarrant at the helm, and ran for 16 years. ITV revived it in 2018 with Clarkson as host.
Clarkson, who also presents two shows for Amazon Prime Video and writes columns for the Sun and Sunday Times, emailed the Duke and Duchess of Sussex on Christmas Day to apologise for his column, in which he had said he hated Markle “on a cellular level”.
Harry had described Clarkson’s comments as “horrific, hurtful and cruel”. Clarkson’s daughter criticised the column on Instagram.
Clarkson told Harry and Meghan that the language he had used was “disgraceful and that I was profoundly sorry”.
McCall told Variety that ITV moved swiftly to distance itself from Clarkson’s comments. Two days after the column appeared, the company’s director of television, Kevin Lygo, had said the comments were “awful”.
McCall said: “There was no dissent internally. We came out much quicker than anybody else … [and] said, ‘Yes, we do not endorse a single word that he said on that. And there’s no place for that on ITV.’”
