A Place In The Sun star Jonnie Irwin claims he was 'thrown on the scrap heap’ by TV bosses after coming clean with his cancer diagnosis.
The property expert, 49, went public with his illness in November 2022, which was over two years since he was initially diagnosed. The father of two said that he kept his diagnosis private for as long as possible as he "needed the money" and didn't want others to treat him differently.
However, when he eventually came clean to bosses about his illness, Jonnie was left with a "massive hole" in his income after the Channel 4 show was unable to keep him on. He said on the OneChat podcast: “The only reason I kept it secret is because I've got to earn, I’ve got to feed my babies, I’ve got to pay my bills."
He continued: “As soon as you say you’ve got cancer, people just write you off, people just think you are going to cark it. If I was to continue to be able to provide for my family, I just had to keep it a secret and it was really difficult.”
He added: "Unfortunately, one of the companies claimed they couldn’t insure me and so they didn’t renew my contract and left a massive hole in my income.
"I felt like I’d been thrown on a scrap heap. They recruited within a week and then I saw someone else doing my job.”
Last year, a spokesperson for Freeform Productions said: "Jonnie has been a hugely important part of the A Place in The Sun family for over 18 years and all of us were deeply saddened by his diagnosis.
"Much loved by everyone on the production, no stone was left unturned in trying to enable Jonnie to continue his international filming with us during Covid but the production company were unable to secure adequate insurance cover for him."
Elsewhere in the podcast interview, Jonnie urges people not to make the same “mistake” as he did and get critical illness cover. He pleaded: "I didn’t take critical illness insurance out and therefore I had to keep working.
"If I had taken the critical illness insurance out, that could’ve covered my outgoings and I probably could’ve told the world a lot sooner. I could’ve had two years of living a more open lifestyle.”
A Place in the Sun airs on Channel 4 every weekday from 3pm.
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