Daily Times

Back in 2011, Jenny Eclair sat on the Loose Women panel alongside Loose Women stalwarts Janet Street-Porter, Carol McGiffin, Denise Welch and Andrea McLean, however, after just a year on the show she was replaced by Corrie star Shobna Gulati.

Speaking on White Wine Question Time, she said that her leaving the popular lunch-time show wasn’t exactly a mutual thing.

“I was sacked from Loose Women and sacked from this and sacked from that,” she said.

When host podcast Kate Thornton suggested she may not have been sacked, but instead her contract wasn’t renewed, Eclair immediately retorted saying that definitely wasn’t the case.

“I was absolutely sacked!” she declared. “They no longer wanted me on that show. I was furious. I still get furious about that!”

The star has previously spoken out about how her sacking wasn’t a surprise as she was very much “a square peg in a round hole”. Speaking to the Daily Express back in 2012, she said: “I didn’t understand some of the views, I didn’t agree with a lot of the opinions and thought some were very weird.” Even though she is still really furious at what happened, she said it turned out to be the best thing in the world.

“I’m really glad that I was sacked — and I will not use any other word,” she remarked.

“I was sacked and proud to have been sacked because it made me write another book. I could have got very lazy doing Loose Women, because you just sit there, don’t you, talking? I wrote more novels and I’m really glad because you know, the novels are good.” The star, who has written several novels, recently published her menopause memoir. Entitled Older and Wider: A Survivor’s Guide to the Menopause, it’s an honest account of what it’s been like for the comedian going through this somewhat turbulent time. She is now however eschewing middle-aged fiction for something a little younger. “I’ve got a teenage fiction on the go,” she told Thornton.

“I’m having a very nice time with teenage fiction at the moment. I’m not going to tell you the exact period, but it takes me away from all this on a daily basis when I’m writing. I’m not in 2021. I am somewhere else, which I can thoroughly recommend.” During the podcast, Eclair also talked of some of the more difficult TV jobs she’s done, including reality shows I’m A Celebrity and Splash!.

“The jungle was possibly one of the hardest ones I’ve done – I think Splash! was much easier,” she revealed. “The physical thing of the diving was ridiculous, because there’s only so much training you can do in so many weeks and the bruising on your legs when you’ve got it wrong… Honestly, it was shocking. They used to have to do some real cover up jobs.” When asked by Thornton why she had turned to reality shows like that, the 61-year-old was frank. “All of them have been for money, because the career has hit a doldrum period yet again,” she revealed. She continued: “I hate to use the phrase roller coaster because it’s so naff, but there are times when you really do go off track and you’re one of those rusty old wagons in the sidings that nobody wants to use.