Top Gear presenter Jeremy Clarkson has apologised after he was reported to have used racist language while filming an episode of the hit motoring show.
The Top Gear host reponsded to reports that he used the n-word while reciting a nursery rhyme, although it was later edited out of a BBC broadcast.
He said: “Ordinarily I don’t respond to newspaper allegations but on this occasions I feel that I must make an exception.
“A couple of years ago I recorded an item for Top Gear in which I quoted the rhyme ‘eenie meany minie mo’.
“Of course I was aware that in the most well known version of this rhyme there is a racist expression that I was extremely keen to avoid.
“The full rush’s show that I did three takes. In two I mumbled where the offensive word would normally occur and in the third I replaced it altogether with the word teacher.
“Now when I viewed this footage several weeks later I realised that in one of the mumbled versions that if you listen very carefully with the sound right up it did appear that I’d actually used the word I was trying to obscure.
“I was mortified by this, horrified. It is a word I loathe and I did everything in my power to make sure that version did not appear in the programme that was transmitted.
“In fact I have here the note that I sent at the time to the production office and it says: ‘I didn’t use the ‘n’ word here but I just listened through my headphones and it sounds like I did. Is there another take that we could use?’
“Please be assured I did everything in my power to not use that word and that I’m sitting here begging for your forgiveness for the fact that my efforts obviously weren’t quite good enough. Thank you.”
The Daily Mirror said the footage was studied by “audio forensic experts” who told them the star “can be heard chanting, ‘Eeny, meeny, miny moe…’. He then mumbles, ‘Catch a n****r by his toe’.
The BBC said in a statment: “Jeremy Clarkson has set out the background to this regrettable episode.
“We have made it absolutely clear to him the standards the BBC expects on-air and off.
“We have left him in no doubt about how seriously we view this.”
Piers Morgan, a long-term foe of Clarkson, has repeatedly posted about the allegations on Twitter today.
The outspoken 49-year-old tweeted that if the claims are true, it “surely” spells the end of the Clarkson’s TV career.
Soon after the news broke, Morgan wrote: “If this N-word allegation is true, @JeremyClarkson is TV toast, surely?”.
He then referenced other famous names who have previously been caught up in race allegations, adding: “Ron Atkinson was fired by @ITV for using the N-word. Don’t see how the BBC can avoid firing @JeremyClarkson if he did the same.”
Hours later he then asked if Clarkson had been “fired yet”.
However, Clarkson’s fellow Top Gear presenter, James May, has defended his on-screen colleague.
The 51-year-old wrote on Twitter: “Jeremy Clarkson is not a racist. He is a monumental bellend and many other things, but not a racist. I wouldn’t work with one. #ThatIsAll”.