This Morning hit with more than 2,000 complaints after Vanessa Feltz's coeliac comments
03.01.2024 - 19:01
/ ok.co.uk
Vanessa Feltz ’s comments about coeliac disease on This Morning have received more than a thousand additional complaints, raising the total to over 2,000. The TV presenter said a caller’s mother-in-law not allowing them to bring their own food to a gluten-free Christmas dinner was “completely unreasonable”, during an episode of the ITV show on December 18.
The remarks initially received 1,092 complaints, according to an Ofcom report released on December 20, making it the ninth most-complained about programme in 2023.
The media watchdog said in its report on January 3 that a further 1,177 complaints have been made, bringing the total to 2,269. This raised the programme to the fifth most-complained about last year, just behind a discussion on the junior doctors’ pay dispute on Channel 5’s Jeremy Vine show which came in fourth with 2,302 complaints.
Ofcom confirmed it is still assessing the complaints before deciding whether to investigate. During the This Morning segment, Feltz said the caller asked their mother-in-law whether they could bring their own food to the Christmas meal, which was going to be gluten-free due to a guest having coeliac disease.
In response to the caller being told not to bring anything, Feltz said: “So she’s treating coeliac disease as if it’s a potentially fatal peanut allergy and they can’t have anything with gluten in the house which is completely unreasonable.” Vanessa, 61, later apologised on her TalkTV show for the comments, saying “if anyone misunderstood or felt that I did, I am very sorry”. On her show, she showed a clip of herself making the remarks before discussing them with Dr Saleyha Ahsan and a viewer named Jason, who suffers from coeliac disease.
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