Jeremy Clarkson's December 2022 Sun column about the Duchess of Sussex drew a record 25,100 complaints to the press regulator IPSO and was later found to breach discrimination rules. The row briefly put the presenter's lucrative Amazon career in jeopardy.
The column, published on 16 December 2022, was written in the week the Sussexes' Netflix documentary series was released. In it, Clarkson wrote that he hated Meghan 'on a cellular level', adding that he lay awake at night dreaming of the day she would be made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while crowds chanted 'shame' and threw lumps of excrement at her. He described the passage as a clumsy reference to a scene in Game of Thrones, in which the character Cersei Lannister endures a naked walk of atonement.
The backlash was immediate and fierce. Politicians, celebrities and members of the public condemned the piece, with Scotland's then first minister Nicola Sturgeon calling it deeply misogynistic and downright awful. Complaints flooded into the Independent Press Standards Organisation, reaching 25,100 and making it the most complained-about article in the regulator's history by a wide margin.
Clarkson apologised on social media, saying he had put his foot in it and was horrified to have caused so much hurt. He also emailed an apology to the Duke of Sussex on Christmas Day. The Sun removed the article from its website and archives and issued its own apology, saying that with free expression comes responsibility.
The matter did not end there. In June 2023, IPSO upheld complaints brought by two women's rights charities, finding that the column breached Clause 12 of the Editors' Code, which covers discrimination. The regulator said the piece compared hatred of the duchess to other women only, invoked stereotypes about women using sexuality to exert influence, and referenced a fictional scene of public humiliation inflicted on a sexually manipulative woman. Taken together, it amounted to a pejorative and prejudicial reference to the Duchess of Sussex's sex. It was the first time in IPSO's nine-year history that it had upheld a complaint on grounds of sexism.
The Duke of Sussex described the comments as horrific, hurtful and cruel. Amazon, for whom Clarkson fronted The Grand Tour and the hit farming series Clarkson's Farm, said its executives were shocked and disappointed, and the presenter's future with the streamer was thrown into doubt. In the event, Clarkson's Farm continued, becoming one of Prime Video's biggest British hits.
The episode cemented Clarkson's reputation as Britain's most provocative columnist, but it also demonstrated the limits of that provocation in an era when press regulators, advertisers and streaming giants all weigh the cost of outrage.