Clive Myrie addresses being pulled from News At Ten after Boris Johnson jokes

Clive Myrie has spoken out after it was claimed that he was pulled from the News At Ten after making jokes about Boris Johnson.

Reports said the TV star was told he wasn't doing the BBC’s news broadcast on Friday, 16 June after he cracked jokes about the former Prime Minister on Have I Got News For You (HIGNFY), which aired on the BBC on the same night.

He addressed it on Steph’s Packed Lunch after host Steph McGovern told him he'd been trending online, and explained that he hadn't been able to do the news as it was too close to the comedy show.

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Asked if he could present News At Ten on that Friday night, the 58-year-old admitted: “No, no, I couldn't, I couldn't, no.”

“Did you have to be pulled from doing it then because you had done all those fruity jokes on Have I Got News For You?” McGovern asked.

“It was nothing to do with the jokes," Myrie explained.

"They’d have just pulled the programme if it was the jokes, it wasn't the jokes, it was because the two programmes were too close together.”

McGovern asked if it would have been too odd to have him being light-hearted on one show and then serious on the next, and he replied: “Boom!”

The host asked Myrie when he knew he wouldn’t be presenting the bulletin as planned, and he replied: “It was after I had recorded the show, which is the day before.”

Myrie also revealed he wasn’t fussed at being pulled, saying: “Why would I be bothered? I did the Six O’clock News that night.”

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He also talked about how much fun he had on HIGNFY, confessing that “to be out of that sort of straitjacket of news for a while is brilliant”.