Ed Balls has revealed he bought flowers for his Good Morning Britain co-host Susanna Reid after kicking her in the head.
In January 2024, the popular ITV daytime show was briefly derailed during a segment on plane etiquette, in which Balls and Reid were asked to sit in airplane chairs installed on the set of the show.
While discussing whether it was ever appropriate to rest your feet on the chair in front of you, Balls rested his feet on the head rest of Reid’s seat, colliding with the back of her head in the process.
“I think we’ve decided it’s not OK,” Reid responded, while clutching her head. “I don’t know if I can carry on doing the programme, I’m seeing stars!”
In a new interview with The Telegraph, Balls and Reid discussed the incident. “I was cross,” Reid recalled. Balls added that he had “never sent flowers to a work colleague before”, but figured it was an appropriate gesture.
The incident became a running joke during the rest of the January 2024 episode, with one viewer emailing the show and insisting that Reid sue Balls for damages.
“Honestly, no lasting damage,” Reid said. “Although my eyesight did go blurry for about 20 minutes.”
Balls became a permanent co-host on Good Morning Britain in January, having served as a regular guest host since 2021. That was the same year in which Reid’s former co-host Piers Morgan famously stormed off the set of the show during a heated discussion about Meghan Markle. Morgan quit the show later the same day.
“Did I see it coming? No,” Reid told The Telegraph. “Was it a shock when it happened? Yes.” But she added that the pair have since put the incident to bed and remain good friends. “I know for a fact he still watches the show because he will text when we’re on air,” she said.
Balls’s role on Good Morning Britain has faced some criticism due to his history as a Labour MP (he served as the Shadow Chancellor of the Exchequer until 2015, when he lost his seat in the West Yorkshire county of Normanton), and his marriage to the Labour foreign secretary Yvette Cooper. It is due to this relationship that Balls sits out interviews with Cooper whenever she appears as a guest on the show, though that hasn’t stopped occasional criticism over his impartiality towards political guests.
In March, the show was plunged into a brief crisis after a fire alarm went off in the studio, forcing it off air 20 minutes earlier than scheduled.
