Watch: Stephen Colbert expresses regret for Kate Middleton jokes

Oh dear. In his never-ending quest to prove that he’s almost as funny as Jon Stewart, Stephen Colbert has tripped up again. The late-night TV host was on Monday night forced to issue a humiliating apology to the Princess of Wales after he produced a segment mocking her “disappearance” and marriage — shortly before it emerged that she had cancer. Classy.

Colbert began his Late Show on March 12 with a two-minute-long monologue “spilling the tea” on the royals in which he made a series of not-especially-funny jokes about scurrilous rumors involving William and Kate. Unfortunately for Colbert, they aged so poorly that he was forced to make the following statement at the top of his show yesterday:

I don’t know if you have noticed, but we, we do a lot of shows and, and, and I tell a lot of jokes and I tell jokes about a lot of different things, mostly what everybody’s talking about. And for the last six weeks to two months, everybody has been talking about the mystery of Kate Middleton’s disappearance from public life. 

And, uh, two weeks ago, we did some jokes about that mystery and all the attendant froufrou in the reporting about that. And when I made those jokes, uh, that upset some people and even before her diagnosis was revealed. And I can understand that. I mean, a lot of my jokes have upset people in the past, and I’m sure some of my jokes will upset people in the future. 

But there’s a standard that I try to hold myself to, and that is, I do not make light of somebody else’s tragedy. Now, I don’t know whether her prognosis is is a tragic one. She’s the future queen of England, and I assume she’s going to get the best possible medical care. 

But regardless of what it is, I know, and I’m sure many of you, far too many of us know that any cancer diagnosis of any kind is harrowing for the patient and for their family, and tough I’m sure they don’t need it from me. I and everyone here at The Late Show would like to extend our well wishes and heartfelt hope that her recovery is swift and thorough.

Lot of words when a simple “sorry” would suffice. And as royal expert Valentine Low noted, the palace had already said she had surgery when Colbert made his comments: she had hardly “disappeared” and was clearly not in a good place. 

Stick to politics next time eh Stephen?

This article was originally published on The Spectator’s UK website.