Clive Myrie was allegedly fired from covering BBC News at Ten on Friday, June 16, after previously presenting Have I Got News For You and joking about Boris Johnson.
The 58-year-old regular visitor hosts the comedy panel, which airs on Fridays at 9 p.m. and features guests and comedians analysing the week’s headlines.
‘After being found by the House of Commons committee to have lied repeatedly, Boris Johnson uses the opportunity to deny that he’s ever gone jogging or owns a dog,’ Myrie opened the new edition.
The remark occurred after the Privileges Committee released its long-awaited findings, which claimed that the former Prime Minister committed “multiple contempts” of Parliament with his Partygate denials.
And while it received a laugh from the studio audience, its now been revealed that the BBC replaced Myrie for News at Ten with Jane Hill ‘at the last minute’ after the corporation’s content chief Charlotte Moore was reportedly ‘concerned about potential impartiality accusations arising’.
‘There wasn’t a specific joke which triggered the request,’ a source added to The Times.
‘It was more to do with concerns that Clive was doing two very different types of programme within an hour of each other.
‘There was possibly a bit of over-caution, which felt a bit over the top to most people in news.’
‘It didn’t feel right for Clive to move practically immediately to the news when he’d just been making jokes,’ a BBC official remarked to the magazine.
‘It was a tonal thing rather than due to anyone being overly anxious.’
Earlier this year, the BBC was embroiled in an impartiality dispute after Gary Lineker tweeted a comparison of the Home Office’s migrant boat strategy to Nazi Germany.
Lineker’s Tweet ignited heated disputes about the broadcaster’s neutrality standards, garnering both acclaim and condemnation.
While the 62-year-old claimed he stood by his social media post, it was then reported that he had been asked to step down from hosting Match of the Day, with Alan Shearer and Ian Wright sticking by him in solidarity.
Lineker later returned to anchoring Match of the Day, and the network announced a review of its social media policies.
Following the reports Myrie was pulled from the news, Lineker Tweeted on Friday: ‘Oh for crying out loud! If the BBC invite @CliveMyrieBBC to present #HIGNFY the chances are there’ll be political jokes.’
