Veteran journalist Nicholas Witchell has taken a brutal swipe at Prince Harry and Meghan Markle as he prepares to deliver his hang up his microphone.
The 70-year-old has spent the last 25 years reporting on the Royal Family, having first joined the BBC as a trainee in 1976. It has meant Witchell has spent hundreds of hours in front of camera, perfecting the craft.
But when delivering the news about the arrival of baby Archie in May 2019, he found himself lost for words. During a live broadcast outside Buckingham Palace, prepared to announce the news of the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s first baby, he found himself handing back to the studio.
It prompted speculation online about possible ill-health. It was certainly a rare mishap for the presenter, who was once branded “awful” by the-then Prince Charles.
However, in an article for The Sunday Times ahead of his retirement next year, Witchell has explained what he felt happened during the broadcast. And it involves a brutal swipe at Harry and Meghan.
He explained: “That was my worst single moment in 48 years.
“Drying up in front of the audience live on the telly.
“It was about Harry and Meghan and maybe subconsciously I just wasn’t that interested.”
One viewer on social media at the time suggested Witchell had “endured enough of the nonsense”. Witchell adds: “I’ve obviously asked myself what went wrong.
“I was tired,you need to wind yourself up to stand there and do that, and I hadn’t. I was complacent,you cannot be complacent about live television because if you are, as I demonstrated in front of however many million people, it can bite you.”
Witchell says he received support from the public following the incident. And actors who had dried up on stage wrote to him to share their experiences.
However, he says he has never been able to watch back the moment because it “shook his confidence quite a bit”.
