Andrew Neil rips into Jeremy Clarkson over nasty Meghan column

Jeremy Clarkson’s piece on Markle ‘was a mistake’ says Neil

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The journalist was happy to share his thoughts on Jeremy Clarkson’s hateful remarks about Meghan Markle, which caused outrage in December after they were published in a column in The Sun. When asked by Steph McGovern during her Channel 4 daytime show on Thursday if he’d have published the piece as an editor, Neil argued he wouldn’t and went on to label the column “abusive, nasty” and “horrible”.

Steph had been joined by Andrew via video link during Thursday’s Steph’s Packed Lunch.

Talking about opinion pieces, she commented: “You see so much opinion in the newspapers, don’t you?

“And like, for example, the disgusting article that Jeremy Clarkson wrote about Meghan Markle.

“If you’d have been the newspaper editor, would you have let something like that go out?”

The former Sunday Times editor replied: “No way, I would not have published it. I think it was a huge mistake by The Sun to publish it.

“And I suspect actually that Jeremy Clarkson now wishes that The Sun has stopped him from publishing it.

“You know, the job of editors is to edit, not just to tick off everything anybody writes for you.”

The 73-year-old continued: “It’s to make sure that what’s being written isn’t just accurate, but is also within certain bounds of taste and has a purpose and isn’t just abuse, nasty and horrible.

“There’s enough nastiness and horribleness on social media, without also having it in our main newspapers and main television.

“So I think it was a dereliction of editorial duty to allow that to be published in the newspaper and the columnists, I think, have suffered as a result.”

Andrew is often outspoken himself and launched GB News in 2021, however, just months later he left his role as chairman.

He said of his swift exit at the time: “It just went from bad to worse.

“There was one day we spent the whole day preparing the programme and fixing up a number of interviews down the line because that was the business model.

“At one minute to eight, I sat down, earpiece in, microphone on, only to be told by the director we had no external communications, so I had no guests.”

He admitted: “I was in despair. Unlike other shows where there are two anchors so they can talk rubbish to each other, I was on my own.”

Talking to MailOnline, he continued: “We had to scour the newsroom and get Tom Harwood and Liam Halligan to come in so I had someone to talk to.

“Live TV is stressful at the best of times but not knowing whether or not the technology would work. It just got worse and worse.

“At one stage, we were waiting to go on air and the whole system went down.”

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