Entertainment
Will Young says The Grand Tour star Richard Hammond is ‘the worst’ over ‘homophobic jokes’
Will said in his opinion, Richard is ‘the worst’ of the presenters (Picture: Rex/Amazon)
Will Young has heavily criticised The Grand Tour for the use of ‘homophobic jokes’ in the programme, labelling star Richard Hammond as the ‘worst’ of the trio of presenters.
In 2019, Will, who rose to fame when he became the first winner of Pop Idol in 2002, spoke out against The Grand Tour, accusing hosts Richard, Jeremy Clarkson and James May of being ‘homophobic’ for making jokes about a certain vehicle being a ‘gay man’s car’.
At the time, the singer lambasted the former Top Gear stars for the ‘sad, shaming and bigoted’ segment of the Amazon Prime Video programme.
Will, 42, recently appeared at The Times and The Sunday Times Cheltenham Literature Festival, where he was asked to share his views on Jeremy.
‘Jeremy Clarkson is the least worst,’ he replied. ‘The other two, in my opinion, are worse. The worst one is Richard Hammond. He’s the worst because he says things like: “I’ve got lots of gay friends.”’
Will addressed the Colombia special programme of The Grand Tour where Jeremy was driving a Suzuki Vitara.
Will spoke out against The Grand Tour two years ago (Picture: Karwai Tang/WireImage)
‘The producers chose to make the main narrative: Jeremy Clarkson is driving a hairdresser’s car. Basically, Jeremy Clarkson is gay. They had him wearing a pink shirt. They spray the car pink. They have him playing It’s Raining Men,’ he said.
The musician said that he attempted to ‘track down the producers’, turning to Google to search for their addresses and saying that he ‘was going to stand outside so that I could talk to them and say “you’re a c***”, basically’, adding that he ‘got sidetracked’.
‘Clarkson was the least of my problems. It was Richard Hammond and it was the producers,’ he stated.
‘They’re sitting in an edit suite for nine months. They created the whole thing and it was Amazon that let it go out. I was so shocked and so upset.’
In 2019, Richard said The Grand Tour stars are ‘not remotely homophobic’ (Picture: S Meddle/ITV/REX/Shutterstock)
Will said that he found it ‘really annoying’ when people on social media said that he was ‘snowflakey’, as he thought to himself: ‘Come on man, take responsibility.’
In 2019, Richard hit back after The Grand Tour was accused of being ‘homophobic’, saying: ‘The criticism is just ‘b***dy annoying. We are not remotely homophobic! If someone takes something as homophobic… I don’t want to cause offence.
‘To say, “oh we need to be really careful not to be homophobic” would say that we are, so we’re not going to try and set out to avoid that sort of thing because we’re not.’
More: Amazon Prime Video
In 2017, Richard said in a statement that he ‘entirely rejected’ claims that he was homophobic following comments he made about ‘coming out’.
‘That’s just not the case,’ he said at the time. ‘The very last thing I am is in any way anti-gay. And I said I believe that love is love is love.’
Metro.co.uk has contacted representatives of Richard and The Grand Tour for comment.
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