Piers Morgan called Huw Edwards a “stand-up guy” after it came out that the BBC star was named as the suspended reporter at the heart of accusations.
After days of claims, Edwards’ wife Vicky Flind made a statement on his behalf on Wednesday evening. In it, she said that he was the broadcaster who, among other things, was said to have paid a young person more than £35,000 for sexually explicit photos.
Flind said in her statement that her husband had “major mental health problems” and was now getting care in a hospital where he would stay for the foreseeable future.
Dan Walker, Jon Sopel, and Alistair Campbell, among others, have since spoken out about how worried they are about Edwards. Piers Morgan has also talked about the problem on his TalkTV show.
He began: ‘Huw Edwards, the face of British news, the face of BBC News, has now been named as the presenter at the centre of this huge scandal that has been raging the last week.’
Morgan continued: ‘He’s authoritative and above all, he’s always been trusted. By all accounts, the audiences love him.
‘I know him personally, he’s always been a very stand up guy.
‘But today’s news that he is the presenter behind the BBC’s sex picture scandal is a huge shock to everyone who knows him, maybe to his family, certainly to millions of people who are used to watching him on the news each night, probably a shock to his colleagues at the BBC.’
Addressing the fact that Jeremy Vine, Gary Lineker and Rylan Clark were amongst those speaking out to deny any involvement in the scandal as rumours circulated, the former Good Morning Britain host went on: ‘The speculation was becoming completely unsustainable.
‘Many other BBC presenters were being shamed and vilified on social media, for something they had nothing to do with and had to in some cases publicly deny their involvement.
‘Viewers would have noticed Huw had vanished overnight from the nightly news bulletins.
‘Clearly Huw Edwards is now in a very serious situation. He probably feels like he’s losing everything.
‘Whatever the outcome of the investigation, it would be inhuman not to think about the impact of all this on him, on his family, on his mental health, all of those are important things to consider now.’
Morgan had earlier said that the incident at the BBC had “put another nail in the coffin of our trust” in the channel.
Piers Morgan Uncensored aired on TalkTV on Monday, and the show’s host talked about how things were going at the time.
‘It seems a warped sense of priorities here and it’s causing a lot of unrest amid other BBC staff,’ the 58-year-old said.
‘It seems to be a failure, wrapped up in a fiasco inside a farce against the backdrop of the scandal of Philip Schofield at ITV, which rocked British television and the country, frankly, the hesitation looks even more unforgivable.
He continued: ‘And whatever the truth about these allegations, and we do need to get to the truth very quickly, BBC leaders have managed to put another nail In the coffin of our trust in the BBC.’
Piers Morgan Uncensored airs weeknights at 8pm on TalkTV.
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