BBC DJ and former I'm a Celebrity... Get Me Out of Here! contestant Danny Baker has been fired by the BBC over a racially insensitive tweet he made about the royal baby.
The presenter had previously apologised for the joke he made about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's new son, Archie Mountbatten-Windsor.
Baker posted a tweet captioned "royal baby leaves hospital", alongside a photo of a chimpanzee in a suit. The tweet has since been deleted, but was caught and shared by others on the social media platform:
The radio presenter then apologised for the post, saying that he did not realise his tweet could cause offence because his "mind [is] not diseased".
He wrote: "Sorry my gag pic of the little fella in the posh outfit has whipped some up. Never occurred to me because, well, mind not diseased.
"Soon as those good enough to point out it's possible connotations got in touch, down it came. And that's it. Now stand by for sweary football tweets."
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The replies were split between people who believed his apology was insincere, and those who could not understand why anyone would find the picture offensive and claimed others were just looking for something to get angry about.
For context, referring to a black or mixed race person as a chimpanzee, ape or any sort of primate has long been a racist caricature.
Despite the apology, the DJ later revealed that he had been sacked from his Radio 5 Live role on social media.
A BBC spokesperson told Digital Spy in a statement: "This was a serious error of judgement 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."
Joe Anderton is a freelance news writer at Digital Spy, having worked there since 2016. In his time, he's covered a host of live events and interviewed celebrities big and small. A big fan of TV and movies both mainstream and obscure, Joe also enjoys video games and in particular PlayStation. Joe currently does not use Twitter, but he only ever used it to tell people to watch the film Help! I'm a Fish.
