Right-wing commentator Katie Hopkins will appear as a talking head in an upcoming documentary about Meghan Markle, the Duchess of Sussex, by Australian broadcaster 60 Minutes.
Yes, that’s the same Katie Hopkins who has been widely condemned as a bigot, who made remarks in the wake of the Manchester bombing that some interpreted as calls for ethnic cleansing and whose column comparing migrants to cockroaches and calling for their deaths was likened to pro-genocide propaganda by the UN high commissioner of human rights.
In what promises to be a deeply-unsympathetic programme about the new mother, Markle is described as having “lost her sparkle” and has apparently moved from being “adored to insufferable in less than a year.”
In a Tweet, 60 Minutes asks what has gone “wrong” for the American, and questions whether the ghost of her husband’s late mother Princess Diana will be able to “save a fairytale.”
On the trail for the as-yet-unaired show, Hopkins – who has previously labelled Prince Harry’s wife a “budget Princess Di” – pipes up to say: “Meghan Markle is the biggest hypocrite there is,” before describing the former actress as a “no one.”
In response to the channel’s decision to use her, Hopkins tweeted: “Trending in Australia and UK. Not bad for a woman without a platform or media voice.”
Journalist Arvind Hickman wrote; “Does 60 Minutes realise how despised Katie Hopkins is in the UK and what her claim to fame is? When did she ever become an expert on the Royal family or anything British, other than UK bigotry? This is a really, really embarrassing oversight by Nine’s flagship current affairs show.”
David Folkenflik tweeted, describing it as a “nasty piece of work” and also highlighted the fact that Hopkins “has routinely been criticised for racist remarks.”
Hopkins rose to a dubious fame as a contestant on the UK version of Trump’s TV show, The Apprentice before becoming a columnist for the Daily Mail and a radio host for LBC.
She was dropped from both after a number of controversial statements including tweeting remarks in the wake of the Manchester bombing that some interpreted as calls for ethnic cleansing.
Hopkins wrote: “22 dead – number rising. Schofield. Don’t you even dare. Do not be part of the problem. We need a final solution. #Manchester.”
She hastily deleted the tweet, changing “final” to “true” and corrected the spelling of Manchester – but not before it had been noticed and screen-grabbed by several sources.
In 2017, Hopkins lost a libel case against the food blogger Jack Monroe after sending two tweets in which she implied that Monroe supported the vandalism of a war memorial.
The court ordered Hopkins to pay £24,000 in damages and £107,000 in legal costs within 28 days.
In the wake of a capsizing in April 2015 in which 400 migrants are believed to have drowned, Hopkins wrote in the Sun that the UK should use gunships to send migrant boats home, adding: “Make no mistake, these migrants are like cockroaches.
“They might look a bit ‘Bob Geldof’s Ethiopia circa 1984’, but they are built to survive a nuclear bomb.”
A day later up to 900 people were feared to have lost their lives after a similar incident.
The column in question was entitled: “Rescue boats? I’d use gunships to stop migrants”.
She wrote: “Show me pictures of coffins, show me bodies floating in water, play violins and show me skinny people looking sad. I still don’t care.”
Hopkins went on to describe the migrants as “feral humans”, prompting the UN high commissioner for human rights, Zeid Ra’ad Al Hussein, to denounce her and compare her comments to pro-genocide propaganda.