Top 20 Most Hated British Celebrities

#20: Wynne Evans

The Welsh singer was already widely disliked thanks to the relentless Go Compare ads that plagued British television in the early 2010s, but his public reputation took a nosedive after his appearance on “Strictly” in 2024. Paired up with Katya Jones, it didn’t take long for rumours of a rift between the duo to emerge, after, during a live recording, Evans seemed to touch Katya’s waist inappropriately, and she pushed his hand away. They denied this, but weeks later and he was booted from the “Strictly” live tour after making a very inappropriate joke to Janette Manrara. There have been additional complaints about his behaviour, but there are now stories that Evans wants to sue for loss of earnings.

#19: Gillian McKeith

If you didn’t hate her before “I’m a Celeb”, you certainly did after, when she faked a fainting fit to get out of being voted to do another trial. But McKeith’s brand of wellness has aged very poorly indeed, as she touts all kinds of bizarre health initiatives to the people she’s meant to be helping lose weight. Despite having no reputable nutritional qualifications, McKeith has fronted TV shows where she examines people’s turds and then advises them that if they’re not vegetarian or vegan, they’ve already got one foot in the grave. She was ordered by the ASA to stop branding herself as “Dr” Gillian McKeith in 2007, and now spends her time complaining about vaccines online.

#18: Noel Edmonds

How can you have anything but contempt for the man who gave us Mr Blobby? While Edmonds is a television mainstay, and was, for a while, the most expensive contestant ITV had ever convinced to enter the jungle, he’s not very popular. He was voted off first, which speaks volumes, but has earned ire for other reasons, too. Notoriously, he was once feuding publicly with Phillip Schofield over some claims he made about cancer. He touted a £2000 device that could supposedly cure depression, stress, and help with cancer, saying that it was a “scientific fact” that diseases are caused by a “negative attitude”. This was followed with a fiery interview on “This Morning” where he tried to defend his position.

#17: Laurence Fox

For a few years this washed-up actor enjoyed popularity as a voice of the far-right, but clearly, that perceived popularity didn’t translate to votes in the ballot box if his disastrous mayoral campaigns are anything to go by. In 2021 and 2024 he tried to run for Mayor of London, losing his election deposit the first time after getting less than 2% of the votes, and in 2024 didn’t do the forms right. That same year he also ran for the London Assembly and got only half a percent, losing five grand. The right-wing populist vote is now thoroughly controlled by Nigel Farage again, and Fox’s political career is just as forgotten as his acting one. He was never a very good actor, anyway.

#16: David Walliams

Though he’s still known for classic sitcoms like “Little Britain” and “Come Fly With Me”, Walliams’ public persona has earned him plenty of critcism. He’s not the only obnoxious “Britain’s Got Talent” judge - Simon Cowell is there too, remember - but he IS one of the few to have been sacked due to a scandal. He was recorded saying offensive remarks about a contestant and, after the recording was leaked, was dropped by ITV - though he’s now trying to sue for “losing his ability to be funny”. Years previously and he was in conflict for his “Hide the Sausage” sketch during “Little Britain Live”, in which he was accused of involving teenagers in a gag where he’s pretending to be a nonce.

#15: Piers Morgan

Just as many people love Piers Morgan as hate him, but which side do you fall on? While he’s made a reputation asking the difficult questions other pundits avoid, like during the pandemic, he’s also got a reputation for being obsessed with the Duchess of Sussex. We’re not sure that even Prince Harry thinks about her as much as Piers Morgan, who ended up spectacularly leaving “Good Morning Britain” because he got called out for his infatuation. He was also embroiled in many scandals during his years at the papers, running hoax pictures of alleged British war crimes and trying to smear Hugh Grant, who hates him to this day.

#14: Katie Price

The glamour model formerly known as Jordan seemingly can’t do anything right. She’s been a popular punching bag of the tabloids for over twenty years, and keeps doing the things that make her the subject of articles and wild speculation - like getting endless plastic surgeries. From the high drama of meeting, marrying, and divorcing Peter Andre on “I’m a Celeb”, to her second stint Down Under where she dumped MMA fighter Alex Reid live, she just can’t do anything right. And after appearing as a regular on “Loose Women” for a few years, she spectacularly denounced her co-stars after leaving when they interviewed Peter Andre and didn’t mention her once.

#13: Chris Evans

Like Laurence Fox, Chris Evans also has the rare distinction in British media of being divorced by Billie Piper. Their marriage raised plenty of questions at the time, with the two marrying when he was thirty-five and she was eighteen. They split after a few years, unsurprisingly, but he hasn’t gotten more popular. In 2016, he was chosen as the new face of “Top Gear” after the unceremonious exits of Clarkson, Hammond, and May, in a disastrous move. Nobody liked “Top Gear” under Evans, including co-host Matt LeBlanc, who reportedly gave the BBC an ultimatum that if Evans didn’t leave, he would. Evans got the chop.

#12: Jamie Oliver

Rest in peace, Turkey Twizzlers. If you’re a Brit of a certain age, you’ll remember vividly the days of school dinners before Jamie Oliver came along and had them made “healthy” and, therefore, unpleasant. He’s done far more than that, though, and remains a widely disliked celebrity chef. He’s come under fire for his crusade against chicken nuggets and for other, more serious things, including writing an offensive portrayal of indigenous Australians in a children’s book. He also fathered the expensive Jamie Oliver Deli by Shell and was widely criticised for teaming up with an oil company. And, finally, there was the bankruptcy of his restaurant chain.

#11: Jeremy Clarkson

Like Piers Morgan, Clarkson’s got a lot of fans. They both make controversial public statements about various things, but care deeply about other issues closer to home. But still, massive numbers of Brits don’t like Clarkson whatsoever, and think the BBC was right not to renew his contract after the 2015 producer punching incident. Also like Piers, he’s become embroiled in controversies around Meghan Markle, getting thousands of regulator complaints after writing in The Sun that people should throw feacal matter at her. Perhaps he was getting her confused with Gillian McKeith? Whatever the case, he eventually apologised and had the article taken down.

#10: Gregg Wallace

“MasterChef’s” cheeky chappy is cheeky no more, having gotten into huge trouble in 2024 after various complaints about him emerged. Dozens of women - some of them extremely famous - said that he acted inappropriately on set, making constant comments about his sex life. His former ghostwriter also spoke publicly and said that he exposed himself to her and then, later, asked whether she’d be willing to eat Eton Mess off of his you-know-what. He’d already been dropped from “Inside the Factory” over other complaints, but was released from “MasterChef”, too, with production company Banijay conducting a formal investigation. He’s denied it via some very miscalculated Instagram videos, which were hastily deleted.

#9: Phillip Schofield

A lot of people already had issues with Schofield before his fall from grace. Various former co-stars, including Fern Britton and Amanda Holden, have been rumoured to be feuding with him, while there were also long-running stories that Schofield and Holly Willoughby couldn’t stand each other. In 2023, Schofield admitted to having an “unwise, but not illegal” affair with a younger, male runner on “This Morning”, whom he’d met when the young man was still a teenager. He left television - returning briefly to live alone on a desert island courtesy of Channel 5 - as did his former lover, who’s now working in a pub, his showbiz career in tatters. Willoughby has written him off entirely.

#8: James Corden

Though he and Ruth Jones gave us “Gavin and Stacey”, one of Blighty’s most beloved sitcoms, Corden himself left the UK for America years ago and ran his own reputation into the ground. As he began hosting “The Late Late Show” over in LA, the mask came off and he became notorious for rude, entitled behavior. This included imposing punitive conditions on the show’s writing staff and yelling at service workers, to the extent that he was kicked out and banned from a restaurant in New York. Eventually, he left “The Late Late Show” and America entirely, returning to the UK to spend more time with his family and make the final ever episode of “Gavin and Stacey”.

#7: Katie Hopkins

It’s only fitting that Katie Hopkins receives as much hatred as she puts out into the world. Over the past two decades, Hopkins - initially famous for a stint on “The Apprentice” before she quit - has become one of the world’s most vitriolic public commentators, whipping up hatred for immigrants and people of colour. She’s become so controversial that she barely even appears in right-wing media outlets anymore, and in 2017 was sacked by LBC for advocating a, quote, “final solution” with regards to the Manchester Arena Bombing. Since her deportation from Australia she’s faded into obscurity - not to mention the fact she was successfully sued for libel and had to sell her home.

#6: Michael Barrymore

There are still plenty of unanswered questions about Michael Barrymore after the events of the 31st of March 2001, but the police haven’t been able to answer them, despite taking him in for questioning many times. He was most recently arrested in connection with Stuard Lubbock’s death in 2021, and has consistently failed to rehabilitate his public image. When he appeared on a celebrity edition of “Come Dine with Me”, a whole new generation of viewers found reasons to dislike him, as he broke plates, tampered with other contestants’ meals, and even nicked a coat to gift to someone else on another night of the competition.

#5: Russell Brand

Even before the 2023 scandal following the long-running investigation into his behaviour, Brand was unpopular. Plenty of people hated his comedy and his lurid sexual jokes, not to mention that for a few years in the noughties, he was utterly inescapable. Since the allegations, though, things have gotten very weird for Brand, with him often promoting conspiracy theories and trying to sell his remaining fans a “magical amulet”. This amulet can allegedly block electromagnetic radiation for the low, low price of $239 - that’s about £190. This amulet claims to block EMF signals in a 42-foot radius, but when tested, it doesn’t even block your phone signal, which it WOULD do if it worked as described.

#4: Jeremy Kyle

He finally faced the consequences of years of his confrontational “conflict resolution” after the death of Steve Dymond in 2019, but has shown absolutely no remorse for what happened. It came to light that Dymond wasn’t the only guest on “The Jeremy Kyle Show” who took their own life, just the most high-profile, happening only a week after the recording. Kyle later staged a broadcasting comeback on Talk, recording an interview with Mike Graham in which he didn’t say a word about Dymond, just that it had been hard on HIM when his show had been cancelled after all the hard work that had gone into it.

#3: Huw Edwards

A reliable figure on the BBC for decades, Huw Edwards found himself in the centre of a media storm in 2023 when a story appeared that a top BBC newsreader had been accused of making indecent images. Edwards was conspicuously absent from the newsdesk and the story was ultimately confirmed by his then-wife. The following year, and Edwards appeared in court on new counts of making indecent images, in different incidents to the ones reported on in 2023. It also came out that the BBC had known about these charges since November 2023, but kept paying him - and even increased his salary - until April 2024. He’s since been told to pay the wages back, given a suspended prison sentence, and been put on the register.

#2: Prince Andrew

He was never THAT beloved in the first place, but did enjoy some popularity in his younger days after coming back from the Falklands. But things only went downhill for Andrew the older he got. He was plagued with a messy divorce, a raft of diplomatic scandals as trade envoy, and, of course, his friendship with convicted sex offender Jeffrey Epstein. Since his disastrous “Newsnight” interview , Prince Andrew has been forced, against his will, to disappear from public life, getting lambasted every time he shows up at royal events. He was even asked by King Charles not to attend Christmas at Sandringham in 2024 after becoming embroiled in a Chinese spy scandal.

#1: Jimmy Savile

After systematically harming vulnerable children - primarily in hospitals - Savile went to his grave with his reputation largely untarnished. That was despite various disturbing stories and at least one arrest, in which he wasn’t charged - not to mention his unsettling documentary with Louis Theroux. After his death, his victims finally felt brave enough to come forward, and the full extent of his hideous crimes is now known. He’s not the only high-profile star to have been doing this while, seemingly, under the protection of top broadcasters, who might have covered his tracks. Rolf Harris was also caught in the net of Operation Yewtree. Let us know in the comments which celeb you hate the MOST.