This Morning hit by a thousand more complaints following Vanessa Feltz uproar

dailyrecord.co.uk:

Vanessa Feltz’s comments about coeliac disease on This Morning have received more than a thousand additional complaints, raising the total to over 2,000 that has been received towards the ITV programme by watchdog Ofcom.The TV presenter said a caller’s mother-in-law not allowing them to bring their own food to a gluten-free Christmas dinner was “completely unreasonable”, during an episode of the ITV breakfast show on December 18.The remarks initially received 1,092 complaints from viewers, according to an Ofcom report released on December 20 last month, making it the ninth most-complained about programme on television in 2023 last year.The media watchdog said in its report on January 3 that a further 1,177 complaints have been made, bringing the total to 2,269.

Ofcom confirmed it is still assessing the complaints before deciding whether to investigate.During the This Morning segment, Vanessa said the caller asked their mother-in-law whether they could bring their own food to the Christmas meal, which was going to be gluten-free due to a guest having coeliac disease.In response to the caller being told not to bring anything, Feltz said: “So she’s treating coeliac disease as if it’s a potentially fatal peanut allergy and they can’t have anything with gluten in the house which is completely unreasonable.”The 61-year-old later apologised on her TalkTV show for the comments, saying “if anyone misunderstood or felt that I did, I am very sorry”.On her show, she showed a clip of herself making the remarks before discussing them with Dr Saleyha Ahsan and a viewer named Jason, who suffers from coeliac disease. Join the Daily Record's WhatsApp community here and get the latest news sent straight to your messages. Vanessa