Queen Camilla does not come out of the Jeremy Clarkson column controversy with a positive look, according to a showbiz reporter.
It comes after the former Top Gear reporter had an opinion column about Meghan Markle in The Sun deemed “sexist” by the Independent Press Standards Organisation (Ipso)
Clarkson wrote he had dreamed of Meghan being paraded naked through British towns and publicly shamed.
Ipso ruled that the article was inaccurate, harassed the duchess and included discriminatory references to her on the grounds of race.
Showbiz reporter Stephanie Takyi told GB News that Jeremy Clarkson had been with Queen Camilla the day before he wrote the article, something that does not reflect well on the royal.
She told Stephen Dixon and Anne Diamond: “What’s interesting about this story is that he was with Camilla the day before he wrote this column.
“That’s why this didn’t really look good on Camilla, as the day before this was written, he was rubbing shoulders with her.
“I don’t know what kind of conversation he was having with the Queen about Meghan.”
Jeremy Clarkson worked as a leading Top Gear presenterPAThe newspaper will have to publish a summary of the findings against it on the same page as the column usually appears, along with a notice flagging the statement on the front page of Saturday’s edition and on its website.
Takyi added that the ruling will open a “can of worms”, and could change the manner in how newspapers report on the Duchess.
“This is the first time Ipso has held up a sexism complaint”, she said.
“I think as a journalist, if you have a column now, it has opened a can of worms and different columnists, if they’re writing about Meghan, will have to be a bit careful.”
In the article, Clarkson wrote: “I hate her (Meghan). Not like I hate Nicola Sturgeon or Rose West, I hate her on a cellular level.”
The regulator found the article’s use of comparison to Scotland’s former first minister Nicola Sturgeon and serial killer Rose West was because the three are famed.
Ipso also said Clarkson framed Meghan’s position as a “specifically female negative role model” when he referred to her influence on “younger people, especially girls”, and described his “dream” of her being publicly shamed in the streets of Britain as a form of “humiliation and degradation”.
It said: “Ipso considered that any of these references, individually, might not represent a breach of the code.
“However, to argue that a woman is in a position of influence due to ‘vivid bedroom promises’, to compare the hatred of an individual to other women only, and to reference a fictional scene of public humiliation given to a sexually manipulative woman, read as a whole, amounted to a breach of clause 12 (which relates to discrimination).”
“Ipso therefore found that the column included a number of references which, taken together, amounted to a pejorative and prejudicial reference to the Duchess of Sussex’s sex in breach of the Editors’ Code.”
