File photo: Piers Morgan and Prince Harry. Picture: Toby Melville and Gareth Cattermole/Reuters
Omid Scobie is being branded a “liar” for insisting he had nothing to do with the naming of two senior royals at the centre of an alleged racism row in the Dutch version of his new book.
The writer’s tome ‘Endgame’ identified the pair of royals who are said to have had “concerns” over the Duke and Duchess of Sussex’s son’s skin colour, but the 41-year-old author has said he has no idea how they got into the translation.
Piers Morgan, 58, named the royal pair on his TalkTV show on Wednesday night, saying the names were already circulating abroad and has blasted Scobie’s claims he is clueless about how the royals were named in the Dutch version of his book and branded Scobie a “lickspittle liar”.
He’s also invited the author to come on his TalkTV show – hitting out: “How else did the Dutch version get printed with those explosive details?
“He wouldn’t know the truth if it slapped him.”
Morgan then wrote online it “must be very frustrating” when “some random person in the Netherlands decides to insert passages” in his book “and you have no idea how that happened”.
Morgan has said he didn’t believe “any racist comments were ever made” by the two members of the royal family named in the Dutch version of Scobie’s book.
He added: “I’m going to tell you names of the two senior royals who are named in that Dutch version of this book.
“Because frankly if Dutch people wandering into a book shop can pick it up and see these names, then you British people here who actually pay for the British royal family.
“You’re entitled to know too.
“And then we can have a more open debate about this whole farrago.
“Because I don’t believe any racist comments were ever made by any of the royal family.
“And until there is actual evidence of those comments being made I will never believe it.
“But now we can start the process of finding out if they ever got uttered, what the context was, and whether there was any racial intent at all.
“Like I say I don’t believe there was.”
Scobie says he “never submitted a book that had their names in it”.
He added: “I had never submitted a book that had their names in it, so I can only talk about my version.
“I wrote and edited the English version of the book with one publisher.
“That then gets licensed to other publishers. I can’t speak Italian, German, French, Dutch or any of the other languages that it’s come out in.”