What do Piers Morgan, Eddie Izzard, Angela Merkel and Emma Watson all have in common?
Answer: They’re all more popular with the British public than Prince Harry.
Sir David Attenborough ranks joint-first, according to a survey that tracks the UK’s best-loved figures, past and present.
The 98-year-old naturalist shares the top spot with legendary Hollywood director Steven Spielberg and Mr Bean comic Rowan Atkinson.
All three have a popularity rating of 84 per cent, according to YouGov – meaning eight in ten Brits have a positive view of them.
Judi Dench, the late Queen Elizabeth II and Morgan Freeman come joint-fourth, amassing a score of 83 per cent.
At the opposite end of the league table was ex-Tory leadership hopeful Stephen Crabb, former Welsh Tory leader Andrew RT Davies and American author Lincoln Child.
All three had a popularity of just 3 per cent.
Yet for Davies and Child, YouGov found the pair were viewed negatively by the same amount of people.
Crabb, on the other hand, was disliked by 8 per cent of people.
Other celebrities had higher dislike scores than Crabb, but YouGov does not publish those rankings.
Crabb, a married Christian father-of-two, quit Government in 2016 days after sending sexually charged messages to a 19-year-old woman who he had interviewed for a junior role in his office.
Prince Harry comes joint-1,336th, with a popularity of 30 per cent. Sixty other celebrities had the same score, including Elon Musk, Louis Tomlinson, Ru Paul, Frankie Boyle, 50 Cent and Robbie Savage. Meghan Markle, meanwhile, shares 2,034th spot with the likes of Bill Cosby, Yoko Ono, Katie Price, Julian Assange and Ellen Degeneres. All had a popularity of just 17 per cent
Sir David Attenborough ranks joint-first, according to a survey that tracks the UK’s best-loved figures, past and present. The 98-year-old naturalist shares the top spot with legendary Hollywood director Steven Spielberg and Mr Bean comic Rowan Atkinson
The league table, which ranks more than 2,600 celebrities, comes from YouGov’s ratings collection, described as the ‘biggest and boldest attempt to quantify what Britain thinks’. The data relates to Q1 of 2025.
Prince Harry comes joint-1,336th, with a popularity of 30 per cent.
Sixty other celebrities had the same score, including Elon Musk, Louis Tomlinson, Ru Paul, Frankie Boyle, 50 Cent and Robbie Savage.
Meghan Markle, meanwhile, shares 2,034th spot with the likes of Bill Cosby, Yoko Ono, Katie Price, Julian Assange and Ellen Degeneres. All had a popularity of just 17 per cent.
When broken down by generation, Samuel L Jackson topped the table for millenials (94 per cent), He was followed by Morgan Freeman (91 per cent) and then Jennifer Aniston and Keanu Reeves (both 89 per cent).
Freeman (91 per cent), Spielberg (90 per cent) and Dench (89 per cent) were the top three for Generation X.
For Baby Boomers, Maggie Smith came top (96 per cent), ahead of Queen Elizabeth II (92 per cent), Felicity Kendal and Dustin Hoffman (both 91 per cent).
Milan Dinic, director – content strategy and innovation at YouGov, said: ‘YouGov Ratings measures popularity based on millions of responses from the British public.
‘The top 40 is dominated by figures from the entertainment industry who have built long careers.
‘Those at the top of this list have appealed to the broader public, across different generations.
‘They largely avoided polarising public opinion and managed to maintain social and cultural relevance.’
