JEREMY CLARKSON is to remain on as presenter of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? for the time being, according to ITV, despite his column about Meghan, the Duchess of Sussex, becoming the most complained about article ever.
Kevin Lygo, a senior figure at ITV said his comments were "awful" but that he is staying on as host of the popular quiz show "at the moment".
Speaking at a Broadcasting Press Guild event in London on Tuesday, Mr Lygo, managing director of ITV Studios, said:
"I would say what he writes in a newspaper column... We have no control over what he says.
"We hire him as a consummate broadcaster of the most famous quiz on television, Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
"So it's not quite in our wheelhouse but I don't know what he was thinking when he wrote that. It was awful."
Asked if ITV will keep Clarkson as host of the quiz show, a position he inherited from Chris Tarrant in 2018, Mr Lygo said: "Yes, at the moment we are."
Asked if Clarkson represents ITV's values, Mr Lygo replied: "No, of course he doesn't in that instance."
It comes after the Independent Press Standards Organisation said the piece, which has since been removed from The Sun's website at Clarkson's request, had received more than 20,800 complaints as of 5pm on Tuesday.
The number surpassed the total number of complaints the media regulator received in 2021, which was 14,355.
60 MPs have written to the editor of The Sun condemning the column "in the strongest terms".
The letter put forward by Conservative MP Caroline Nokes demanded that the publication take action against Clarkson.
It said the former Top Gear presenter's "hateful" article about the Duchess of Sussex had contributed to an "unacceptable climate of hatred and violence".
His column, which was published on Sunday, said he was "dreaming of the day when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while crowds chant, 'Shame!' and throw lumps of excrement at her".
Clarkson responded with a statement, in which he said he would be more careful in the future.
However, this has been criticised for not including an apology.
"Oh dear. I've rather put my foot in it. In a column I wrote about Meghan, I made a clumsy reference to a scene in Game of Thrones and this has gone down badly with a great many people. I'm horrified to have caused so much hurt and I shall be more careful in future," he wrote on Twitter.
Clarkson was referencing Meghan being metaphorically punished in the same manner as villain Cersei Lannister was in the hit HBO series.
