Danny Baker's First Interview Since Being Sacked By BBC Over "Racist" Tweet

9 May 2019, 12:15 | Updated: 13 May 2019, 12:26

Danny Baker criticised BBC bosses after being fired for posting a tweet in which he compared a chimpanzee to the Royal baby.

The radio presenter admitted he deserved to be sacked for his "huge mistake", but insisted it was the way the BBC dealt with him that stuck in his craw.

Danny Baker posted this image on his Twitter account yesterday, but claims he deleted it as soon as he was made aware of the racial overtones of the image.

Giving his first interview since being sacked by the BBC, Danny told James O'Brien: "I put out this gag - any time there's any posh people, I do this - and people got in touch saying 'You know there's a race element to this', so I took it down.

"Had I known... that's what it comes down to. Intent has to be everything.

"It was put up there as a joke about class. It was supposed to be preposterous about toffs leaving. The idea that there was any racial basis for it... it came out of my own ignorance.

"I curdled that I thought anyone could have thought that was the intent behind that photo."

Speaking on his sacking, Danny added: "The BBC suddenly decides they are going to throw us under the bus. That's the thing that stings.

"I think it's a tremendously weasley thing. When they rung up with these portentous tones saying it was 'beyond the pale and abhorrent', I thought yes it was, but you're now giving credence to the idea that I thought 'I know how to reveal myself as a phantom racist after all these years.'

"No, I was given a lecture, which I must say I I terminated after about 30 seconds with a couple of words I'll leave you to fill in."

James insisted the tweet is impossible to defend - something Danny agreed with - and asked whether he understood why the BBC had to take action.

Danny responded: "I think so. I can. But if you could have heard the dreadful faux gravity in the call."

Responding to Danny's sacking earlier in the show, James said he didn't believe the radio host was racist. He stated: "He often talks about chimpanzees dressed as famous people without any racial subtext whatsoever.

"Obviously the subtext changes hugely when the gag is applied to a child of ethnic minority. It changes, of course it does, but I don't think that was even close to Danny Baker's tweet when he sent that tweet because he does loads of stuff about monkeys and apes dressed as human beings.

"The massive racist history of the conflation of gorillas and apes with people of colour is disgusting and I'm afraid it's a matter of historical record. But I don't think Danny Baker did that."