BBC host Nish Kumar hits back at Piers Morgan over homophobia claims
BBC comic Nish Kumar has responded to Piers Morgan’s allegations of homophobia.
Piers Morgan, a personal friend of Donald Trump, was widely mocked earlier this month over an interview with the leader in which he repeatedly lavished praise on Trump while failing to significantly challenge any of the administration’s policies.
The ITV host then accused rival network the BBC of “homophobia”, after comedy show The Mash Report produced a cartoon of Morgan with his nose up Donald Trump’s backside – an apparent reference to the term “brown-nosing”.
Morgan claimed it was “a homophobic cartoon”, insisting: “It portrays two straight men in a homosexual act, so yes, it’s homophobic.”
Mash Report host Nish Kumar today responded to Morgan’s comments.
(ITV)
Speaking to the Times Red Box, Kumar called Piers Morgan’s allegations “weirdly patronising”.
He said: “[Piers] responded to the BBC Two tweet with a slightly passive-aggressive thing, and then at some point later in the day decided he had had enough, and started tweeting about the thing, and then he started tweeting the image itself.
“Obviously it’s an incredibly crude joke, no doubt about it, it’s not high-minded, but it’s in a context.
“What Rachel [Parris, who hosted the segment] does is get away with some really nasty stuff because she is this smiling assassin. In the context of the clip you have Frost/Nixon and then the contrast, and it’s on screen for a split-second, you get the laugh and you’re out.
“What he was hoping to do by taking it out of context, he tried to make it look worse than it is. It then blew up in his face, because everyone just went, ‘it’s really funny!’.
“As various people who work on this show and friends of ours who are gay pointed out, that is in itself an incredibly homophobic allegation. That is not a homophobic act, and assuming it is is at best weirdly patronising.”
Kumar added: “I’ve had dealings with Piers within the calendar year, so when we were writing the piece, Rachel said, I wonder if he’s going to respond to it.
“I said, he probably will, but I suspect he won’t make a big deal out of it – showing once again, my profound lack of understanding of the inner workings of the Morgan brain.
Morgan has become known for his on-air rants about transgender and non-binary people on ITV daytime show Good Morning Britain.
Elsewhere this week, Piers Morgan claimed that a former White House staffer once called him a ‘f**king faggot’.
The former journalist made the allegation about Omarose Manigault-Newma, a former Apprentice contestant who served as Director of Communications for the Office of Public Liaison inside the White House before her very public exit from the Trump administration last month.
Morgan, who appeared on a season of Celebrity Apprentice alongside Omarosa, made allegations about her conduct in a column for MailOnline.
He claimed that she had propositioned him while they were appearing on the show together.
Morgan claims she said: “Piers, do you want a showmance? You know, a romance on the show – we get it on together. Happens all the time on Apprentice. Everyone has sex together.
“Then we can make lots of money out of it.”
President Donald Trump holds an African American History Month listening session attended by Director of Communications for the Office of Public Liaison Omarosa Manigault (Photo by Michael Reynolds – Pool/Getty Images)
He recalled: “I stared at her grasping, ferociously ambitious little eyes, and laughed: ‘You must be joking, you deluded woman.’ She didn’t take it well. ‘What are you? Gay?'”
The columnist claimed, “‘Shut the f**k up, a**hole,’ snarled Omarosa Manigault-Newman at me. ‘How are your kids going to feel when they wake up and discover their dad’s a f**king f*gg*t?’
“Yes, this is the same Omarosa Manigault-Newman who just spent a year inside Donald Trump’s White House.
“I’ve met a lot of vile human beings in my life, from dictators and terrorists to sex abusers and wicked conmen.
“But I’ve never met anyone quite so relentlessly loathsome as Omarosa; a vicious, duplicitous, lying, conniving, backstabbing piece of work”
Morgan went on to claim that Omarosa’s plan inside the White House was “amassing a whole mass of damaging information to now use against President Trump and his administration on Celebrity Big Brother”.
