A virtual press conference set to take place on Tuesday morning in the UK for Jeremy Clarkson’s Amazon Prime Video series Clarkson’s Farm has been called off and the streaming service seems set to dump the former Top Gear host.
The event had been scheduled before Clarkson’s bizarre column about his hatred for Meghan Markle being on a “cellular level” but was cancelled the evening before. This was despite Clarkson posting a fresh apology on Instagram and sending Prince Harry a grovelling email.
“On Dec. 25, 2022, Mr. Clarkson wrote solely to Prince Harry, the Duke of Sussex. The contents of his correspondence were marked Private and Confidential. While a new public apology has been issued today by Mr. Clarkson, what remains to be addressed is his long-standing pattern of writing articles that spread hate rhetoric, dangerous conspiracy theories, and misogyny,” a statement from a spokesperson for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex read.
“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.”
Sources told Variety that the Amazon Prime Video would not be working with Clarkson beyond the seasons of The Grand Tour and Clarkson’s Farm that have already been commissioned. As a result, it seems unlikely that Clarkson will be appearing on any Prime Video shows beyond 2024.
Prime Video declined to comment on this story.
Clarkson had said in his Instagram apology to Harry and Meghan that “ITV, who make Who Wants to be a Millionaire, and Amazon, who make the Farm Show and the Grand Tour, were incandescent.”
He also said that he was “very angry with myself because in all those controversial days on Top Gear, when I was accused of all sorts of things, it was very rarely sexism. We never did ‘women can’t park’ gags for instance… I’m just not sexist and I abhor violence against women. And yet I seemed to be advocating just that.”
In the offending column, published in The Sun tabloid in Britain, Clarkson wrote:
“At night, I’m unable to sleep as I lie there, grinding my teeth and dreaming of the day when she 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 was apparently referencing a scene in Game of Thrones.
