New series ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire’ is being pushed back to 2024 amid major upheaval – after presenter Jeremy Clarkson denied he was fired due to backlash at the Meghan Markle column

The new series Who Wants to Be a Millionaire has been pushed back to 2024 as part of a major ITV scheduling change.

The show, which has already filmed its new episodes, has been hit by the delay due to ITV’s coverage of Rugby World Cup this autumn.

Millionaire is just the latest show to be hit by the World Cup-related delay, following hits Grantchester and The Jonathan Ross Show, which will now air next year.

This comes after presenter Jeremy Clarkson denied being fired from the show in March following his hugely controversial newspaper column about Meghan Markle.

Clarkson denied the claims on Twitter, writing, “I was not fired from hosting Who Wants To Be A Millionaire.”

On hold: The new season of ‘Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?’ has been pushed back to 2024 as part of a major ITV schedule change

The former Top Gear presenter sparked backlash after dreaming in a newspaper column of the Duchess of Sussex being paraded naked through the streets while people pelted her with “excrement”, apparently alluding to a public shaming scene from the fantasy TV series Game of Throne.

That prompted press watchdog IPSO to investigate the column and sparked speculation that Clarkson’s hit shows had been dropped on Amazon Prime after the streaming service’s bosses were reportedly “red hot”.

His fans then feared he would be “cancelled” after ITV could not confirm whether or not he would continue to host Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?

ITV boss Carolyn McCall – who Piers Morgan previously claimed pushed him out of ‘Good Morning Britain’ – appeared to confirm Clarkson will not continue his post beyond the next series already taped.

“We have a contract. We are committed to it [season]so that’s what we’re going to do,” Ms McCall said diversity magazine, adding, “And then we have no future commitments.”

Speaking about Clarkson’s column about Meghan, she added: “We don’t support that in any way… There’s no room for that on ITV.”

An ITV spokesman told MailOnline today: ‘As we have said, ITV has commissioned another series of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? (which has since been recorded) and beyond that there are no further commissioned commissions at this time.’

On hold: The show, which has already filmed its new episodes, has been hit by the delay due to ITV’s coverage of Rugby World Cup this autumn

Remains (for now): This comes after presenter Jeremy Clarkson denied he had been fired from the show in March following his hugely controversial newspaper column about Meghan Markle

However, the channel later released a revised statement, which said: “As we have been saying for several weeks, ITV is contracted to another series of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? obliged.” (which has now been recorded.)

“There are currently no further engagements beyond this, as is usual with shows like this where we make engagement decisions series by series.”

‘To be clear: who wants to be a millionaire?’ nor Jeremy Clarkson were cancelled.’

It was also reported that a Celebrity Millionaire special was shelved after three of its female stars refused to work with Jeremy.

While the official statement from ITV was reportedly that “scheduling issues” had delayed production of the much-anticipated special, The mirror Reports of behind-the-scenes chaos led to this decision.

A source said, “Feelings were expressed very loudly and very clearly.” Namely, that they didn’t want to share a platform with Clarkson, risking being seen as a legitimizer for his misogynistic comments.

The decision to postpone filming for the special was first made public by the Alison Boshoff of the Daily Mail At the time, ITV also attributed the decision to scheduling conflicts.