Prince Harry and Meghan Markle appear to not have accepted Jeremy Clarkson's public apology for a notorious column in which he said he hated Meghan "on a cellular level" and called for her to be "paraded naked through the streets".
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex refute Clarkson's claim in his apology that the column was a rushed one-off, calling it instead part of "long standing pattern" of "articles shared in hate".
Clarkson's opinion piece on Harry and Meghan became the most complained about article for the UK's press standards regulator, drawing more than 20,000 complaints after it was published in December.
In it, the controversial Grand Tour presenter also compared Meghan to infamous UK serial killer Rose West, who was married to Fred West and who killed 12 people between 1967 and 1987.
This week Clarkson claimed on Instagram he had emailed a personal apology to Harry and Meghan, and also offered up another apology.
"I'm going to try and buck the trend this morning with an apology for the things I said in a Sun column recently about Meghan Markle. I really am sorry. All the way from the balls of my feet to the follicles on my head. This is me putting my hands up. It's a mea culpa with bells on," Clarkson said.
"Usually, I read what I've written to someone else before filing, but I was home alone on that fateful day, and in a hurry. So when I'd finished, I just pressed send. And then, when the column appeared the next day, the land mine exploded."
However, Omid Scobie - royal reporter and friend to the Sussexes - shared a statement on social media from a spokesperson for Harry and Meghan in which it was clear the pair felt the apology hadn't gone far enough.
"On December 25, 2022, Mr Clarkson wrote solely to Prince Harry, The Duke of Sussex. The contents of his correspondence were marked Private and Confidential," it read.
"While a new public apology has been issued today by Mr Clarkson, what remains to be addressed is his long standing pattern of writing articles that spread hate rhetoric, dangerous conspiracy theories, and misogyny.
"Unless each of his other pieces were also written 'in a hurry', as he states, it is clear that this is not an isolated incident shared in haste, but rather a series of articles shared in hate," the statement concluded.
The Duke has already hit out at Clarkson's column during interviews for the release of his memoir Spare.
In an ITV interview, the Duke of Sussex said the "silence is deafening" from the royal family about the "horrific" Sun article last month.
On Tuesday morning (NZ time), Variety reported Amazon Prime Video will not be working with Clarkson beyond seasons of The Grand Tour and Clarkson's Farm that they have previously commissioned.
