Almost immediately, Danny Baker's now-deleted tweet is met with criticism with many people accusing the BBC Radio 5 Live broadcaster of racism against Meghan, whose mother is black.
- May 10, 2019
AceShowbiz - BBC radio broadcaster Danny Baker was under fire for a racist tweet regarding Prince Harry and Meghan Markle's newborn baby, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor. The BBC Radio 5 Live broadcaster compared the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's new baby to a chimpanzee in a now-deleted tweet on Wednesday, May 8.
Baker posted a black-and-white photo of a couple holding hands with the animal in a suit and a top hat. "Royal baby leaves hospital," he captioned the tweet.
Almost immediately, the tweet was met with criticism with many accusing him of racism against Meghan, whose mother is black. Baker then deleted his tweet and said sorry for his "gag" which had "whipped some up." He claimed that the connotations had not occurred to him because his "mind [is] not diseased."
He followed it up with another message, in which he said that it was "supposed to be a joke about Royals vs circus animals in posh clothes but interpreted as about monkeys & race, so rightly deleted." He added, "Royal watching not my forte."
Not long after his "enormous mistake," a spokesperson for BBC revealed in a statement on Thursday that Baker had been let go from the company. "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 representating a weekly show with us," read the statement.
Baker, meanwhile, tweeted on the same day, "The call to fire me from @bbc5live was a masterclass of pompous faux-gravity. Took a tone that said I actually meant that ridiculous tweet and the BBC must uphold blah blah blah. Literally threw me under the bus. Could hear the suits knees knocking."
This marks the third time for Baker to leave BBC, though the network said that he only left on his own accord once. Baker was fired for encouraging soccer fans to torment a referee after the latter made a controversial penalty call in a big game back in 1997. Later in 2012, he resigned following a rant in which he called his bosses "pinheaded weasels" for asking him to move his show from a weekday to the weekend.
