Former Loose Women panellist Carol McGiffin has said the show should be axed, branding it "boring" and claiming it is "done". The 66-year-old presenter, who spent two decades on the ITV daytime chat show before leaving in 2023 due to "contract issues", said budget cuts mean the programme is no longer the one she once knew.
Speaking to The Sun, she said: "It's done, it's over. I'm sure a lot of people still love to sit down and watch it, but not me." She also confessed she no longer feels "cut out" for TV and criticised the decision to remove the show's live audience, adding "maybe it's time to put it down".
Show is a 'sad shadow of its former self'
This is not the first time McGiffin has criticised the programme. Last month she wrote in Best magazine that Loose Women had become a "sad shadow of its former self".
She said: "There's nothing worse than having to watch someone you love die a slow, painful death but it's also painful to watch when something you loved dies a slow death. And so it is, in my opinion, with Loose Women. It's been happening for a while but now it seems to be in its final throes. Loose Women used to be a show full of humour, with strong sassy women, innuendo and risqué topics. It was a joy to do and an even bigger joy to watch. Watching now it's a sad shadow of its former self, boring, strained, unfriendly and with too many rich, whinging women going on about the menopause or their terrible lives."
Former panellist Sherrie Hewson also critical
Sherrie Hewson, who spent over a decade on the panel until she quit in 2016, has also shared her thoughts on the show's changes, claiming the panel "used to have freedom". The 75-year-old told the Mirror last month: "Loose Women in my day was extraordinary, because we didn't have the problems we have now where you can't say that. We didn't have any of that, we just said what we thought. We had the most I had unbelievable rows with Janet Street-Porter, but they were real rows. We were still friends afterwards and went out to dinner. You don't see that anymore, but because we had the freedom to do it, it was a very different day."
McGiffin previously explained her exit from the show, saying: "The problem was, ITV were insisting, for the first time since I went back in 2018, that if I wanted to carry on doing the show, I would have to sign a contract that was totally unjust and unworkable for me, so I had to say 'no thanks'."
