Susanna Reid greeted Richard Madeley warmly as he returned to Good Morning Britain after a brief leave.
About his absence from the show, the broadcaster stated that he had not been’sacked,’ before outlining a tragic mishap in which he got a serious injury.
‘You appear to have made a full recovery,’ Susanna remarked, as Richard outlined how he had previously been speaking with a lisp after his incident.
‘I was either a freak having an accident or I had a freak accident,’ he quipped.
The 66-year-old described himself as ‘crouching down on a slope’ between his open car door, ‘fiddling around with stuff at the bottom of the car’ when calamity struck.
‘I turned around as the door decided to close itself. Gravity pulled it shut, it’s a big heavy door,’ he shared, as Susanna, 52, grimaced.
‘It just hit me on the chin and I really bit my tongue, to the extent that I needed an op. I had to have some stitches in it.’
Richard went on to say that he ‘didn’t truly receive the sack,’ as one magazine stated.
Susanna’s reaction to Richard’s disaster was, ‘That’s horrible.’
‘It wasn’t pleasant actually. Eating and drinking was difficult,’ her co-host responded, explaining that he had to miss two weeks of GMB as a result.
Susanna was compelled to step in before to Richard’s brief absence from GMB after he used improper pronouns while referring to musician Sam Smith live on the show.
In January of this year, the presenter was discussing a music video made by the singer, who identifies as non-binary, saying, ‘For the sake of this argument, let’s just read out the material we didn’t show you.
‘Men film from behind gyrating while wearing leather trousers with the bottom cut out in a heart shape, a shot of him… Sam.’
Susanna then stepped in to say: ‘They… remember Sam Smith uses the pronouns they.’
Acknowledging his blunder, Richard added: ‘They, yes sorry.’
Good Morning Britain airs weekdays from 6am on ITV.