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Duchess Meghan at the Queen's funeral in September
Photo: Geoff Pugh / AFP
A hateful guest post by British presenter Jeremy Clarkson in The Sun tabloid about Duchess Meghan has sparked a record number of complaints.
As reported by the PA news agency, citing the British press council Independent Press Standard Organization (Ipso), more than 17,500 complaints against the text had been received by morning.
That is more than the Press Council had received in all of the previous year – and more than ever before for a single contribution.
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British presenter Jeremy Clarkson in June 2021
Photo: Ian West / dpa
Clarkson had written in the guest post last week, among other things: "I hate Meghan".
He also fantasized about wanting Prince Harry's 41-year-old wife to be paraded naked through British cities and pelted with excrement by a crowd.
The text had triggered a storm of indignation.
Even Clarkson's daughter Emily, who hosts a podcast, distanced herself from her father.
The 62-year-old then shared via Twitter that he had made an "awkward" reference to the "Game of Thrones" series.
He announced that he would be "more careful" in the future.
The Sun deleted the guest post from its website at the author's request.
demands for consequences
More than 60 members of parliament from different parties wrote to the editor-in-chief of The Sun, Victoria Newton, demanding an apology from the paper and consequences for Clarkson.
The guest post was in response to the release of the second part of the Netflix docuseries Harry & Meghan.
In it, the two set out the reasons why they left the inner circle of the British royal family.
According to media reports, the royal family is critical of the series: the royal family is "in a state of sadness," wrote the "Sun."
There is no way back into the inner circle, the newspaper quoted palace insiders as saying.
The Mirror wrote that Harry's older brother Prince William was "pissed off".
The heir to the throne was particularly upset that Netflix used scenes from his mother Princess Diana's famous BBC interview, in which she reported on the affair of her ex-husband Charles, now the king, in 1995.
William assumed that the excerpts would never be shown again and that he agreed with his brother.
Now he feels cheated.
bam/dpa
