Top Gear host Jeremy Clarkson has received a final warning from BBC bosses after The Mirror newspaper obtained footage of him using a racist term during filming for the hit show.

The footage, obtained two years, showed Clarkson reciting an old version of the rhyme Eeny, meeny, miny, moe with contains the offensive word “n****r”.

Although Clarkson insisted in a video statement that he did everything in this power to avoid saying the word, he was called before BBC bosses this week and given a final warning that any further offensive remarks would lead to his firing.

Clarkson, who maintains that he never uttered the “distasteful” word, recounted the incident in his regular column in The Sun newspaper on Saturday.

“I’ve been told by the BBC that if I make one more offensive, remark, anywhere, at any time, I will be sacked,” he wrote.

“It’s funny. I’ve always thought I’d be sacked for something I said. Not for something that actually, I didn’t say.”