‘I was so naive’

Craig Mclean talks to Danny Baker about his ‘abhorrent’ royal baby tweet

When, two days after the birth of Archie Windsor, veteran BBC broadcaster Danny Baker tweeted a picture of a chimp captioned ‘Royal baby leaves hospital’, he was sacked, the police investigated and he became the main topic on Newsnight. Six months on, as he launches a new podcast, he talks to Craig Mclean about how he’s learnt his lesson. Portrait by Christopher Bethell

ON THE EVENING of 8 May this year, Danny Baker was doing what he often does of an evening: goofing about on Twitter. On social media the veteran broadcaster has particular areas of interest. Mostly these involve arguing breezily about football, posting old Youtube clips of music he likes and riffing on items familiar from the south Londoner’s Saturday-morning BBC 5 Live radio show. It’s knockabout stuff, finessed on 53,000-plus tweets and retweets over eight years, and beloved of his half-a-million loyal followers.

But on this occasion, the presenter, DJ, journalist, author and gag-writer didn’t stick to his script. At 6.09pm that day, Baker posted a vintage black-and-white picture of a well-dressed couple accompanied by a suited, booted and bowler-hatted monkey. The caption: ‘Royal baby leaves hospital.’ And then…

‘You have to remember, I don’t have a [mobile] phone. Which is peculiar, I know,’ admits a man who seems almost wilfully out of touch – he hasn’t even been to the cinema in ‘eight, nine’ years. ‘So I don’t check. When I went back on[line] and saw people saying: “Dan, I don’t think you’ve thought that

Opposite Baker was challenged by reporters the morning after his tweet