Danny Baker has attempted to explain himself for a second time, after losing his BBC 5 Live presenting job following his offensive tweet about Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s newborn son.
The 61-year-old drew heavy criticism for sharing a photo of a well-dressed man and woman holding hands with a suited chimpanzee on Twitter, which he captioned: “Royal baby leaves hospital.”
As the replies rolled in, he deleted the post and wrote that the racist connotations “never occurred to him”.
On Thursday morning, Baker then announced his dismissal from the BBC on Twitter and sent a string of new posts on the matter, accusing his former employer of “throwing him under the bus”.
The following day, he sent a fresh thread of posts, reflecting on the “one of the worst days of my life” and telling his followers: “I just want to formally apologise for the outrage I caused and explain how I got myself into this mess. I chose the wrong photo to illustrate a joke. Disastrously so.
“In attempting to lampoon privilege & the news cycle I went to a file of goofy pictures & saw the chimp dressed as a Lord and thought, ‘That’s the one!’
“Had I kept searching I might have chosen General Tom Thumb or even a baby in a crown. But I didn’t. God knows I wish had.”
Baker added that “minutes after” posting the tweet, he was “alerted” to the fact the royal baby is mixed race, causing “waves of panic and revulsion”.
“Fuck, what had I done?” he wrote. “I needed no lessons on the centuries slurs equating simians and people of colour. Racism at it’s basest.
“I am aware black people do not need a white man to tell them this. Deleting it immediately and apologising for the awful gaffe I even foolishly tried to make light of it. (My situation that is, not the racism involved.) Too late and here I am.” [sic]
He continued: “I would like once and for all to apologise to every single person who, quite naturally, took the awful connection at face value.
“I understand that and all of the clamour and opprobrium I have faced since. I am not feeling sorry for myself. I fucked up. Badly.”
“But it was a genuine, naive and catastrophic mistake,” Baker said, adding that he is “now paying the price for this crass & regrettable blunder and rightly so”.
“Probably even this final word from me will extend the mania (‘Dog whistle’ anyone?),” he concluded. “I would like to thank friends on here for their kinder words and once again - I am so, so sorry.”
After his sacking, Baker’s name remained a trending topic on Twitter for hours, but not everyone agreed with the BBC’s decision to sack him.
Posting on Thursday afternoon, Mock The Week host Dara Ó Briain weighed in, writing: “What? Danny Baker got fired? But he immediately apologised and deleted the tweet! I mean, literally, in the event of mistakenly causing offence, what else can you do? Genuinely amazed by that.”
After engaging in direct conversation with many of the people who had tweeted him, Ó Briain posted a clarification, adding: “Also amazed by how many thought that by posting this, I was excusing the original tweet. Of course I wasn’t.
“The Irish had a century of that monkey shit too, y’know (cf Punch magazine). Ultimately, though, I’d like that to hope if/when I fuck up, you might accept an apology…”
Speaking shortly after Baker announced he’d been fired, a rep for the BBC told HuffPost UK that his initial tweet went against the corporation’s values.
They 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.”