JEREMY Clarkson's piece in The Sun in which he insisted excrement should be thrown at a naked Meghan Markle has led to 12,000 complaints being made to the press regulator.
Ipso, the independent press standards organisation, said on Monday morning that there had been 6000 complaints regarding the article, later adding that the figure had doubled by 5.30pm.
The total number of complaints made to Ipso in 2021 was 14,355.
Clarkson wrote a column published on Friday for the Sun in which he said he couldn't sleep at night because he was "dreaming of the day" Markle could be paraded naked through every street in Britain and have excrement thrown at her.
He added he hated the Duchess of Sussex on a "cellular level" and suggested everyone his age "felt the same way", prompting outrage on social media.
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A spokesman for IPSO said: “We will follow our usual processes to examine the complaints we have received.
“This will take longer than usual because of the volume of complaints.”
On Sunday, Clarkson's own daughter Emily criticised him and said: "I stand against everything my dad wrote about Meghan Markle."
The former Top Gear presenter also said he hated First Minister Nicola Sturgeon and serial killer Rose West in the same sentence.
His article said: "I hate her [Meghan]. Not like I hate Nicola Sturgeon or Rose West. I hate her [Meghan] on a cellular level.
"At night, I'm unable to sleep as I lie there, grinding my teeth and dreaming of the day when she is made to parade naked through the streets of every town in Britain while the crowds chant 'shame!' and throw lumps of excrement at her.
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"Everyone who's my age thinks the same way," he added. "But what makes me despair is that younger people, especially girls, think she's pretty cool. They think she was a prisoner of Buckingham Palace, forced to talk about nothing but embroidery and kittens."
Sturgeon said on Monday his comments were "beyond the pale" and "deeply misogynistic".
The column was written as a reaction to the Netflix series recently released documenting Harry and Meghan's relationship and their issues with the royal family.
In last week's final instalment the Duke and Duchess of Sussex spoke about the mental health impact the tabloid media had had on them.
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