BBC radio broadcaster Danny Baker has been
fired after posting a racist tweet about the Duke and Duchess of
Sussex’s new baby,Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor.
On Wednesday, the BBC Radio 5 Live
presenter tweeted a black and white photo of a man and woman holding
hands with a chimpanzee in a suit and a top hat, with the caption,
“Royal baby leaves hospital.”
Amid widespread accusations of racism,
Baker deleted the tweet and said he was sorry the “gag” had “whipped
some up.” He claimed the connotations had not occurred to him because
his “mind (is) not diseased.”
In a second message, Baker said that the
tweet was “supposed to be a joke about Royals vs circus animals in posh
clothes but interpreted as about monkeys & race, so rightly deleted.
Royal watching not my forte.” On Thursday, the broadcaster said he made
an “enormous mistake.”
A BBC spokesperson said: “This was a
serious error of judgment and goes against the values we as a station
aim to embody. Danny’s a brilliant broadcaster but will no longer be
presenting a weekly show with us.”
