Beth Rigby has admitted she offered to resign as Sky News‘ Political Editor for attending Kay Burley’s lockdown-breaking birthday bash in December 2020. As Guido exclusively revealed at the time, Rigby joined 9 Sky colleagues at Burley’s illegal sixtieth birthday while London was still under Tier 2 rules. Both Rigby and Burley were taken off-air for three and six months respectively…

Now Rigby has revealed in a Times interview that while her lawbreaking “wasn’t a deliberate thing“, it was a “a really stupid thing to do”, and she even offered to step down:

“Actually, what people don’t know about all of that, which no one really knows, apart from a couple of people at Sky, is that I did offer to resign over it because I realised as it played out in the press how bad it looked, that it was potentially damaging for the channel, that it had upset my colleagues, and I felt absolutely wretched about that.”

Sky’s Head of News John Ryley rejected Rigby’s resignation, instead saying “I don’t want you to do that. I want you to remain our political editor but I think you need to kind of spend some time away.” Suspect Kay Burley did not make the same offer.