In January this year South Africa was thrown into a racial debate after comments made by Penny Sparrow dominated social media chatter.

Gareth Cliff weighed in on the issue saying that “people really don’t understand free speech at all“.

It was a comment that not only saw him dominate the trends list‚ get trolled and labelled a racist‚ it also cost him his job. Well‚ at least for a while.

Soon enough M-Net issued a statement which said that Gareth had been fired as a judge on season 12 of Idols.

Gareth did not take the issue lying down.

He took the matter to court and won with costs. M-Net had to backtrack on its decision to fire him and said it respected the courts decision.

As season 12 was due to air‚ M-Net decided to “poke fun” at the incident which the broadcaster previously thought was serious enough to fire him.

The first episode of the season began with a skit involving the other judges‚ all of whom Gareth is personal friends with.

And with just a few weeks to go until the end of the season‚ Gareth announced his resignation.

“It’s time! After eleven seasons of Idols‚ it’s time for me to say goodbye. What better way to bring this chapter to a close than a trip to New York and meeting American Idols judge Harry Connick Jr and being on his post-Idols show — ’Harry‚’” Gareth wrote.

TshisaLIVE has been told that while M-Net wasn’t going to invite him back for the next season‚ Gareth’s announcement was unexpected.

Just a few days later Gareth announced that he had a new book out and sources close to team Cliff told us that he’d be spilling the juice on what happened.

Cliffhanger: Confessions of a Shock Jock immediately made headlines as the Sunday Times reported that Gareth admitted to ‘spiking’ former judge Mara Louw’s drink with vodka. At the time he told people that the headline was sensationalist and simply not true.