Fern Britton: I was seen as a 'liability' before This Morning exit

Fern Britton thinks she was seen as a "liability" before she left \'This Morning\'.

The 62-year-old television presenter quit the show - which she co-hosted with Phillip Schofield - in 2009, and she admitted the scandal surrounding her gastric band weight loss "ruffled a few feathers" between her and ITV.

She said: "It was all gastric band-gate. It ruffled a few feathers, and I think perhaps I became a bit of a liability to ITV. I really don\'t know.

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"But I know that the day I decided to leave - and I\'m not going to get into this now - something happened that morning and I thought, \'I\'m done\' and ITV went, \'thanks very much, goodbye.\' "

And whilst Fern wouldn\'t give the reason why she left, she insisted it wasn\'t due to a pay row between herself and her co-host Phillip.

Speaking to talkRADIO, she added: "That got into a story and it was not to do with that. I didn\'t know what Phillip was earning.

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"But I knew that I was earning plenty for me and you have to know what is enough for yourself.

"I\'m old fashioned enough not to question what other people are earning. I was very well looked after."

Fern echoed previous comments she made in 2018, when she insisted she never knew how much Phillip was getting paid when they worked together on \'This Morning\'.

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She said at the time: "That certainly wasn\'t true, not least because I had no idea what Philip had been paid; I knew what I was being paid and it was more than fair.

"It is appalling that, if you are doing the same job as a man, you are paid less and I am absolutely all for equal pay but at the time, even if Phillip had been paid more than me, he was doing more programmes on television."