SAIRA Khan has admitted the reason she quit her role as a panellist on ITV show Loose Women.
TV star Saira enjoyed a five-year stint on the programme between 2015 and 2020 before dramatically quitting with immediate effect.
Saira quit the show as bosses attempted to get her to sign up to OnlyFans
Saira claimed they did not care about her mental health
But now the former The Apprentice runner-up claims she left the programme when producers asked her to join X-rated website OnlyFans.
Saira said she was horrified that she had been asked to set up an account on the adult subscription site as part of a PR stunt for the lunchtime programme.
Furthermore, Saira went on to detail how bosses had previously asked her to have a mould of her vagina created as part of a Body Stories campaign.
Speaking to the Mirror, Saira said: “The straw that broke the camel’s back was when one of the young producers was sent running after me to ask whether I would be prepared to open an OnlyFans account.”
A disgusted Saira went on: “I could see she herself was mortified to ask me. I replied, ‘You’re asking an Asian woman who has a husband and kids and comes from a Muslim family to open an OnlyFans account?’
She admitted the young producer told her they had asked her as Saira had shared images of her in underwear on her own social media and they wanted to see what response she would get from men on the site and use it as part of a story on the panel show.
Saira said she knew her time on the programme was up there and then revealing she had been left feeling ‘humiliated, angry’ and ‘disappointed’.
Saira went onto slam ITV bosses and their approach to mental health highlighting previous tragedies such as the Love Island suicides including host Caroline Flack and Jeremy Kyle star Steve Dymond, 63.
She said that she would go home in tears at some of the producers demands and was offered no support after her and her young family became the victim of online trolling and threats.
The Dancing on Ice star also discussed how producers would “rub their hands with glee” at negative stories about the star in order to drive clickbait.
Speaking about her negative experience, she added: “The system is toxic. They do not have people who have the expertise to introduce wellbeing and mental health care.”
Saira claims to have been harassed by producers to do things she did not want to do and said she felt like ‘PR fodder – with no respect for my background or culture’.
Elsewhere, the TV presenter felt Loose Women bosses kept her on the show to be the ‘gobby Muslim woman’ and admitted that the culture on the show encourages the panellists to ‘argue’ and be ‘bitchy’.
Saira further went onto say: “I was never sat down and reassured to make sure I was OK.”
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A spokesman for Loose Women said: “We strongly refute all of these claims. Duty of care is of paramount importance for all of our panellists. Saira left the panel almost two years ago and we wish her well.”
A source further added to the Mirror: “Loose Women Investigates is a strand which has seen reports into a range of topics. Sites such as OnlyFans could always potentially be the subject of an investigation. The Body Stories campaign tackled the taboo of vagina dysmorphia back in 2017. Saira was not involved in this campaign.”
The star says she felt used like ‘PR fodder’
