Andrea McLean, a former Loose Women panellist, has opened up about her relationship with the ITV programme and her former co-stars.
After 13 years on the show, the 54-year-old presenter announced her resignation in 2020 to discover ‘what the cosmos has in store.’
Since leaving, the former GMTV weathercaster has become a certified life coach and co-hosted a podcast, Mastering Midlife, with her husband, Nick Feeney, among other things.
Andrea’s many pursuits also mean she no longer watches Loose Women since it airs during the day, while she is at work, she revealed.
She does, however, see her old co-stars ‘every now and again,’ notably Denise Welch when she isn’t flying to see her son Matty Healy’s band The 1975 and Brenda Edwards.
Andrea explained: ‘I still follow everyone on Instagram and I still meet up with them every now and again, everyone is so busy, when Denise is in the country when she’s not jetting off around the world, or when Brenda is not on stage belting out a tune.’
As for whether she missed being on Loose Women, Andrea told The Sun: ‘But in terms of do I miss it, I work for myself now, so I do a lot of stuff working from home and anybody who has left any organisation to strike out on their own, I do miss getting up and getting in and meeting the whole team and seeing everybody and hearing the gossip. I miss that kind of daily interaction with everybody.
‘But I don’t miss it in terms of the way people would think I suppose because it was great and I left because I was ready to try something else and went off in a new and exciting direction.’
Andrea opened up about her decision to leave Loose Women last year, adding she was ‘scared’ about the move.
She said the biggest misconception about her decision to hand in her notice was that she ‘became this person who knows everything.’
‘I don’t,’ Andrea continued. ‘But I know someone who does it and if I don’t, I’ll look into it.’
The journalist, on the other hand, claimed the months after her departure from Loose Women felt like a ‘blow in the gut’ since she no longer had a stable income, leaving her to live off savings for eight months.
Speaking on the Secure The Insecure With Johnny Seifert podcast, Andrea said: ‘On the day that I announced I was leaving, every brand dropped me… so I went from, “OK I knew I had this amount of money coming in and this much work that will see me through to the next six to eight months,” it disappeared overnight.
‘That’s how big a deal moving away from TV is. It was financially like a punch in the stomach, my safety net was gone.
‘I was like, “Oh my god I only have my savings. I can’t turn back and change my mind. I have no other income.”
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When Andrea announced she would be quitting the ITV daytime talkshow, she broke down in tears and told her co-panelists: ‘I want to be brave. It was a really big decision to jump and see if I fall or fly.’
She said: ‘You get one life. Are you living it the way that you want and are you doing everything that you want to do? Are you taking chances? And I realised, no.’
‘I just thought, I will never know unless I try so I am saying goodbye to Loose Women,’ Andrea added.
Loose Women airs weekdays from 12.30pm on ITV and ITVX.