Jeremy Clarkson has revealed he is ‘worried’ about John Torode after the MasterChef star was sacked for allegedly using the N-word on set.
What happened to John Torode?
Torode, 59, who also hosts a cookery show with his wife Lisa Faulkner on ITV, lost his job at MasterChef following a complaint from a member of staff.
This comes after two decades over allegations he used the racial slur, which he claims to have ‘absolutely no recollection’ of.
The BBC confirmed in a statement on Tuesday that Torode’s contract would not be renewed after a report found he had used an ‘extremely offensive rac!st term’.
The upheld allegation of racist language was one of nine complaints made against Torode in the report, which also related to allegations of abusive language towards junior production staff and se*ual language, and which were not upheld.
Why BBC sacked Jeremy Clarkson
Clarkson, who was dismissed from the BBC himself in 2015 following an altercation with a Top Gear producer, commented on Torode’s sacking in his latest column for The Sun this week.
Clarkson wrote: ‘Funny isn’t it how Top Gear was always seen as the bad boy of the BBC. Every week, we’d be in the papers for doing something wrong or saying something inappropriate.
‘And as a result, we were always being carpeted by bosses who told us to sit up straight and clean our teeth, and behave ourselves. Ha. It now turns out that, compared to every other show on the Beeb, we were saints.
‘That said, I am a bit worried about this John Torode chap from MasterChef. Because he seems to have been sacked for an offence, even though no one can quite say what the offence was.
‘He’s been told that at a private party seven or eight years ago, he sang a song which someone thought was racist and that as a result, he has to go. Who reported him? Dunno. Was there any context? No one’s saying,’ Clarkson concluded.
It has been previously reported that Torode used the N-word while singing along to a Kanye West song during a wrap party in 2019.
But BBC News has since reported this was not the incident which led to the complaint upheld by the report.
These allegations were not upheld as they were unsubstantiated due to a lack of evidence or witnesses.
The complaint against Torode was revealed in the report into co-presenter Gregg Wallace’s inappropriate behaviour.
