Denise Welch took a savage swipe at her Loose Women co-stars after an on-air fight with Stacey Solomon.
The women had a bust-up during an edition of the ITV daytime talk show in June, and while Denise dismissed rumours of a feud, she hinted at tensions during a chat on Olivia Attwood ’s podcast So Wrong It’s Right. The 66-year-old explained: “I’m always happy to have new blood on ( Loose Women ) because we do get bored of each other. But I’ve always been sceptical when younger people come in because, sometimes, they may have a great life story but they are either not prepared to talk about it yet, or are too worried about what the public are going to say.”
She then lifted the lid on the behind-the-scenes tension, and added: “So they’ll be in a meeting saying ‘I’m not going to talk about that,’ and it’s kind of like, ‘what are you gonna talk about then?’” Stacey joined the show in 2016, and is one of the youngest members of the panel, along with Katie Piper and Frankie Bridge, and Denise’s comments come after her explosive on-air fallout with Stacey earlier this year.
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During the debate in June, Stacey, 35, defended people working flexible hours from home after the pandemic, but she clashed with Denise, who believed that the country was “grinding to a halt” as the staff had “disappeared”. Unimpressed, Stacey replied: “They don't disappear because they're working from home,” but Denise was insistent, and asked: “But, where are they Stace?”
The mum-of-five went on to explain that she thinks the pandemic proved a lot of the UK’s workforce could do an “adequate if not better job” from home, but Denise disagreed, and viewers were left uncomfortable with the tension between the two women. The following month, former actress Denise explained the fallout, and said it had been blown out of proportion. “We disagreed on something, it was about young people and work ethic and since Covid, have Gen-Z become a bit more lazy and entitled, it was one of those kind of Loose Women things,” she began.
“Stacey said something about nurses and the NHS which provoked a great big reaction, and I actually agreed with her,” Denise added. The TV star was met with a fierce backlash over her anti-vaccine stance back in 2020, as well as her opposition to the lockdowns during the pandemic, and several of her Loose Women co-hosts have challenged her on her controversial views. Denise claimed to have had only a handful of disagreements with her fellow panellists during her 25 years on the show, and hinted that she doesn’t get along with some of the other hosts.
“In 25 years, there have obviously been a couple of people who aren’t as close as some of the others. Like in any show, there are some people you prefer, there are some panels I prefer to others. Just because of the dynamics of personalities,” she cryptically explained on an US podcast earlier this year.
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