Royal commentator Omid Scobie deletes ‘tasteless’ Kate Middleton tweet
Royal commentator Omid Scobie has deleted a “tasteless” tweet about Kate Middleton’s cancer diagnosis after he received huge backlash.
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Omid Scobie has deleted a ‘tasteless’ tweet of an alarm clock being set to 6pm – the exact time Kate Middleton announced her cancer diagnosis in the UK – after huge backlash online.
The Endgame author, 42, uploaded the cryptic screenshot to X on Friday at 4:59pm UK time, one hour before the Princess of Wales announced the news to the public.
Mr Scobie’s post initially caused speculation among his followers and royal enthusiasts who tried to guess what the controversial figure was teasing at.
However, about an hour after Middleton, 42, released her personal video message, Mr Scobie deleted the post as people flooded the comments with criticism.
“Disgusting man. Literal shame on you,” one user replied to the post on X, formerly known as Twitter.
“Will you now shut up Scobie? Are you happy now?,” another user asked the royal commentator.
However, Mr Scobie made a follow-up post later that night defending the alarm clock tweet and labelling its initial interpretation as “upsetting and disturbing”.
“When there was word circulating that an announcement was coming from the Palace at 6pm GMT, I tweeted an image of the time for followers to keep an eye out,” Mr Scobie posted to X.
“When the world, and myself, learned how serious the news ended up being, I removed the tweet to stop any speculation taking place underneath it.”
— Omid Scobie (@scobie) March 23, 2024
“It’s upsetting and disturbing to now see that post being portrayed as some sort of sick countdown,” he explained.
Despite the backlash, Mr Scobie has kept two other posts about the Princess of Wales live on his X account with comments limited to his close circle.
He re-posted Middleton’s video message, initially released by the The Prince and Princess of Wales official X account, alongside a transcript of the announcement which he said was “brave”.
Middleton delayed revealing her cancer diagnosis publicly in order to protect her and Prince William’s three children, according to reports.
“William and I have been doing everything we can to process and manage this privately for the sake of our young family,” Kate explained in the video.
“As you can imagine, this has taken time. It has taken me time to recover from major surgery in order to start my treatment.
“But, most importantly, it has taken us time to explain everything to George, Charlotte and Louis in a way that is appropriate for them, and to reassure them that I am going to be OK.”
It’s understood William and Kate were determined to keep it out of the public domain until they were able to share the news with George, 10, Charlotte, 8, and Louis, 5.
Kate began “preventive chemotherapy” treatment for the disease at the end of February, weeks after leaving The London Clinic, where she had undergone major abdominal surgery for what was believed to be a non-cancerous condition
In her video, she explained that the initial surgery was deemed a success, but the cancer was later discovered during post-operative tests.
The news comes after Mr Scobie recently weighed in on the Princess of Wales’ Mother’s Day portrait after it was ‘killed’ by multiple photo agencies.
On March 11, Scobie posted a veiled remark about the photoshop scandal to X, musing “wonder what it would be like if they had a good comms team”.
Only days later, the royal commentator took another jab at the Royal Family when he re-tweeted a Forbes article calling the ‘credibility’ of Kensington Palace into question.
“There are dozens of pages of reporting and detailed statements to support this in my book Endgame,” Scobie wrote.
“This not just about one poorly-managed photo release, it is years of deceit, cover-ups and lies.”
Scobie is no stranger to controversy following the release of his royal expose Endgame in November 2023.
Copies of the explosive book were urgently pulled from shelves in the Netherlands after it was discovered that one version had “accidentally named” King Charles and the Princess of Wales as the alleged “royal racists”.
The “racist” scandal dates back to Prince Harry and Meghan Markle’s 2021 Oprah Winfrey interview.
In the interview they alleged that while she was pregnant with their first child, Prince Archie, there were “concerns and conversations” about how dark his skin might be.
At the time, the Duchess of Sussex stopped short of naming the person involved, telling Winfrey: “I think that would be very damaging to them.”
The best-selling royal writer, who is known to be a ‘Duke and Duchess of Sussex sympathiser’, reportedly caused shockwaves through Kensington Palace upon the book’s release.
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