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Evening Standard
Evening Standard
Entertainment
Lisa McLoughlin

Eamonn Holmes says kids aren’t being prepared for life’s hardships as he discusses exam stress

Eamonn Holmes has claimed that the youth of today aren’t being prepared to cope with life’s hardships as he questioned exam procedures nowadays.

The GB News presenter, 63, said, as reported by the Daily Mail: “What are we doing with young people today?

“When we all sat our exams in an assembly hall, you had adjudicators and invigilators.

“Now, you get kids with carers because some of them are feeling anxious. Well, that’s what exams are supposed to do.”

The broadcaster’s comments comes days after he said he believes “no-one is interested” in older, white men in the modern media landscape.

The TV star, who currently hosts GB News’s weekday morning programme Breakfast with Eamonn and Isabel, previously presented GMTV for 12 years, before going on to lead Sky News Sunrise until 2016 and co-host This Morning with his wife Ruth Langsford on Fridays from 2006 to 2021.

Holmes pictured with wife Ruth Langsford presenting This Morning (ITV)

Now Holmes has claimed that he is “bottom of the list” when it comes to casting choices.

The Northern Irish star told Kaye Adams’s How To Be 60 podcast: “It’s a hard time to be a white bloke in his 60s, absolutely without a doubt.

“No one’s interested in casting you, no one’s interested in planning a programme around you, no one’s interested in your experience. You do not tick the right boxes for them in terms of your sexuality, your ethnicity.

“You’re bottom of the list when it comes to choices. I read things like, ‘Eamonn is male, pale and stale’ and I think, ‘What are you talking about?’ I see myself as top of my game.

“In our industry, this obsession television has with youth is laughable.”

In the same interview, Holmes also claimed that a BBC Radio 5 Live boss told him he was attracting too many older listeners during a 2009 lunch.

He said: “So we lasted the first course, then I basically told him to f*** off and that was the end of that.

“I’d carry on working until my 70s. I feel I’ve got lots to contribute, I’m across world events. I don’t think I’m an old fuddy duddy.”

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