This Morning with Phillip Schofield, 60, for ten years from 1999. During her time on the show, Fern faced widespread backlash after being accused of lying about how she lost five stone while fronting a Ryvita Bikini Fit campaign.The TV star has now looked back on the controversy surrounding her 2006 gastric band surgery, which resulted in her being temporarily “taken off air” from the ITV show.Speaking on the Postcards From Midlife podcast, Fern claimed ITV took the decision to suspend her for a few days after the news of her gastric band operation broke.Fern began: “ITV were not really that helpful.
When the story first broke, I went into work that next day - Monday…“The press office said to me, ‘Do you want us to come and talk to you about it?’“I said, ‘No, I’ll be fine.
I’ll be fine.’ The next day, I got a phone call from the ITV boss saying to me, ‘Right, tomorrow you have to say, in hindsight, you realise you should have told everybody that you had a gastric band.’“And I said, ‘You’re asking me to apologise’.
And he said, ‘I’m being very careful not to use that word’.“And I said, 'No, I’m not going to.Stuff that.’ And he took me off air for a few days.”Fern went on to candidly admit that receiving the call and subsequent suspension left her feeling “furious” amid speculation she was having a “nervous breakdown”.The author continued: “So, there were then a lot of newspapers saying I was clearly having a nervous breakdown, obviously.“But I wasn’t.
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