Despite concerns about the host, James Martin’s Spanish Adventure will continue to show on ITV.
The chef will travel throughout Europe cooking and meeting people in the next ITV show, which will premiere in the fall.
It comes following claims that the TV chef engaged in harassing and threatening behaviour while filming James Martin’s Saturday Morning and the aforementioned ITV show.
When a drain in his house became clogged in 2018, the broadcaster allegedly “launched a foul-mouthed diatribe towards employees.”
He addressed the allegations, originally published on Deadline, with his representative saying: ‘An unfortunate incident occurred after filming James Martin’s Saturday Morning in 2018 where James’ home was badly damaged. Blue Marlin Television accepted responsibility.
‘James was shocked by what had happened and on reflection acknowledges he responded emotionally, which he wholly regrets.
‘James apologises for any offence or upset caused, as he did at the time to the crew involved.’
Martin disclosed that he underwent surgery after being diagnosed with facial cancer before it returned on ‘several occasions.’
He said: ‘I was then diagnosed with cancer on my face and I had to have surgery, which I couldn’t do until two days before Christmas when we had finished filming.’
Martin stated that the year before the incident occurred was ‘one of the most fraught and difficult periods of my life’, after the death of his last living grandparent, his home being burgled and the cancer diagnosis.’
‘After all this stress I was in a very emotional state, and when after filming in early January 2018 I discovered my home had been flooded while filming, I was extremely upset,’ he told The Sun.
‘I can only say I am human and following a build-up of personal life pressure, I admit that I overreacted regarding the damage to my home.’
There were also ‘issues’ during the filming of James Martin’s Spanish Adventures.
Martin was accused of causing individuals to cry in front of their coworkers and changing plans at the last minute while coming an hour late to a shoot set for the morning earlier this year.
An ITV spokesperson said: ‘At ITV people and their welfare are our highest priority. The production companies who make shows for us have primary responsibility for the duty of care of everyone they work with, both on and off-screen. We make clear our expectations in this regard as part of our pre-greenlight duty of care processes. This includes having appropriate independent controls in place to enable everyone who works on their shows to confidently and confidentially raise concerns.
‘Following a complaint we received in May from members of the Blue Marlin production team about the filming of James Martin’s Spanish Adventure, we contacted Blue Marlin to discuss these concerns and to understand how the issues raised were being addressed and what actions were being taken.
‘As a result, we made a number of recommendations for Blue Marlin to implement as soon as possible, sharing best practice of some of our own relevant procedures around staff welfare and reiterating our Supplier Code of Conduct.’
The show’s distributor, DCD Rights, also told Deadline it will still be ‘launched at Mipcom to international buyers as planned.’
