Danny Baker has issued a formal apology for the outrage caused by his tweet about the Duke and Duchess of Sussex's newborn son, Archie, which featured a picture of a chimpanzee. The BBC Radio 5 Live DJ was sacked on Thursday over the post, which he described as 'one of the worst days of my life'.
In a statement released on Twitter on Friday, Baker explained that he had chosen the wrong photo to illustrate a joke, saying he went to a file of goofy pictures and saw the chimp dressed as a Lord. He acknowledged the centuries of slurs equating simians and people of colour, calling racism 'at its basest'.
Baker apologised to everyone who took the awful connection at face value, stating he is now paying the price for his crass and regrettable blunder and rightly so. The tweet came on the same day Prince Harry and Meghan Markle posed with their son, Archie Harrison Mountbatten-Windsor.
This is not the first time Baker has faced disciplinary action from the BBC. He was dropped from his football phone-in show in 1997 after allegedly inciting threatening behaviour, and his BBC London 94.9 show was axed in 2012.
