Vanessa Feltz claims that many who have spoken out against This Morning are doing it because they dislike the show.
Not only has long-time presenter Phillip Schofield, 61, left the ITV breakfast show after admitting to lying about having an affair with a teenage colleague, but other stars have now complained the show has a ‘toxic’ environment.
Former broadcaster Eamonn Holmes, 63, and ex-resident doctor Ranj Singh, 43, have both made accusations.
However, Vanessa, 61, a regular on This Morning, has taken aim.
During her Talk TV show on Tuesday, she said: ‘It has been suggested that quite a lot of the people who are very vocally critical of This Morning and, actually, it’s a handful of people, there are some celebrities, a couple of journalists, and what’s been suggested is quite a lot of them were once on the programme and aren’t on it anymore.’
‘And that is the reason for this aggrieved, grudging malice that is coming out but if you ask people who are still on the programme and who are on it regularly, who enjoy being on it, they won’t know what they’re talking about.’
Her comments follow claims from presenters such as Eamonn, who said the toxic environment did exist, but placed blame on former host Schofield and his ‘friends in management and everybody who kept you in power and in abuse of power for so long’.
Around the same time, Dr Ranj expressed worry about the show’s culture, but after sharing his concerns with management, he found himself being utilised ‘less and less’.
Their comments were backed up by the show’s former Head of News Emily Maddick, who quit her job after three months due to what she labelled a ‘bullying, sexism and a toxic culture of fear and intimidation’.
‘I am sad to report there is a culture of intimidation at This Morning and on a number of occasions this has prevented me from doing my job to the best of my ability,’ she wrote in a piece published on Glamour, where she now works.
Recalling a ‘climate of fear’, Maddick said she had ‘overheard’ what she found to be sexist comments at times, and pointed to instances of bullying that left her concerned about the ‘mental health’ of her team.
‘I was flabbergasted by how utterly fake it all was,’ she wrote in the piece.
After retiring from This Morning, Schofield refuted that the environment was stressful for employees, claiming that it was the “best show to work on.”
‘In all the years I worked there there was no toxicity,’ he posted on Instagram.
He added that people could ‘listen to those persistently loud voices if you like’, but the ‘thousands of guests over the years, thousands of staff and crew, hundreds of presenters and contributors all know, it IS a family of wonderful, talented, kind, hard working people’.
This Morning airs weekdays from 10am on ITV1.
