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60 Minutes’ ‘reprehensible’ guest Katie Hopkins’ controversial past

Nine’s upcoming Meghan Markle expose has already caused an international uproar — thanks largely to the inclusion of one controversial woman.

Nick BondNick Bond
@bondnickbond
3 min read
September 6, 2019 - 4:25PM
60 Minutes' controversial Meghan Markle investigation promo

60 Minutes’ upcoming Meghan Markle expose has caused an international uproar before it has even aired — with many asking why the program is giving airtime to one of Britain’s most-hated public figures.

The furore has been caused by an explosive 60-second teaser video, much of which is devoted to British media commentator Katie Hopkins — who boasts she’s the “biggest bitch in Britain — airing her unfiltered views on Markle.

Karl Stefanovic.
Karl Stefanovic.
Katie Hopkins on 60 Minutes.
Katie Hopkins on 60 Minutes.

“She’s a no one. She wears bad clothes. Meghan Markle is the biggest hypocrite there is,” she says, declaring that “all she does is glow.”

Hopkins’ advice: “Abdicate. Off you go.”

Karl and Katie vox pop outside Buckingham Palace.
Karl and Katie vox pop outside Buckingham Palace.

In another scene, reporter Karl Stefanovic and Hopkins are shown vox-popping members of the public outside Buckingham Palace.

“There’s nothing wrong with Meghan,” says one man.

“Well there’s nothing right with her either,” says Hopkins.

While viewers will have to wait until Sunday to see exactly how balanced or otherwise 60 Minutes’ full report will be, that Hopkins is featured at all is enough for many.

“If you have to bring in Katie Hopkins, you’re scraping the absolute bottom of the barrel, So immediately we can dismiss this trash “entertainment” as *any* form of “journalism.” Are there any POC in this doc other than the woman being bullied?” asked British actress Jameela Jamil.

Hopkins, who first found fame as a contestant on the British version of The Apprentice before moving into a media career, has been routinely labelled “racist” and a “bigot” for her views about immigrants in British media, making headlines for calling migrants “cockroaches” and “feral” and declaring that “gunboats” should be used to stop migrants and refugees from reaching their destination.

In 2013, she sensationally claimed her children would be banned from having friends with certain given names she considered to be lower class, such as Chardonnay, Charmaine or Chantelle.

The 44-year-old has also been accused of fat-shaming on many occasions and is anti-Islam, anti-immigration and pro-Trump. She has called the city of London “Khan’s Londonistan” — a reference to British-Pakistani London Mayor Sadiq Khan — and claimed there is “institutionalised discrimination against whites” in the UK.

After the Manchester bombing in 2017, Ms Hopkins sensationally called for a “final solution” to Islamic terror attacks — a term used by the Nazis to refer to the Holocaust.

Hopkins was at one stage a frequent guest on British TV.
Hopkins was at one stage a frequent guest on British TV.

But it was comments Hopkins made on Twitter in May 2015 about food writer and anti-poverty campaigner Jack Monroe that really came back to bite her.

In that incident, Hopkins accused Monroe of vandalising a war memorial.

It ended up being a case of mistaken identity — but while Hopkins later deleted her tweet, she did not apologise, and went on to brand the chef “social anthrax” online.

In January 2016, Monroe launched legal action and Hopkins ended up losing the $AU239,000 libel case after High Court judge Justice Warby said the tweets caused Monroe “serious harm”.

In September last year, Hopkins applied for an insolvency agreement in a desperate bid to avoid bankruptcy. She had already had to sell her Devon home to cover mounting legal costs.

“It’s really quite sad — two tweets cost her her house, job, and now her credit rating,” Monroe told the Guardian of the legal win last year.

In this British TV special, she debated reality star Gemma Collins about whether overweight people should pay more for flights. Picture: TLC
In this British TV special, she debated reality star Gemma Collins about whether overweight people should pay more for flights. Picture: TLC

“I’m supposed to be jubilant and celebratory but I feel quite mixed up. Having been close to the edge of bankruptcy myself, it’s a hideous situation to be in, but it was completely avoidable. Things are in place in that agreement to make sure her children are looked after. I’m a mother myself and I read it line by line to make sure that her children didn’t suffer as a result of what she’s done.”

In recent years, and in the wake of that financial insolvency, Hopkins’ lucrative British media appearances have all but dried up — and more recently, she joined Canadian far-right website Rebel Media as a columnist, but it’s understood the outlet quietly dropped her at the start of the year.

With the UK media and public have all but shunned her, an appearance on 60 Minutes is Hopkins’ most high-profile gig in a while — and she’s so far been revelling in the attention, tweeting that it was “not bad for a woman without a platform or media voice” to be “trending in Australia and UK”.

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Original URL: https://www.news.com.au/entertainment/tv/current-affairs/60-minutes-reprehensible-guest-katie-hopkins-controversial-past/news-story/7bc710fd4aa0d4458a577860e2fcfe93