Loose Women has been pulled off air this week in a huge ITV schedule shake-up to make way for the broadcaster’s coverage of Cheltenham Festival.
There will be no new episodes of the lunchtime chat show on ITV, after Monday's instalment aired hosted by Ruth Langsford.
ITV has cleared its lunchtime schedule for its rolling coverage of the 2023 Cheltenham Festival, which will now take up the weekly slot typically devoted to Loose Women, on weekdays from 12.30pm on ITV1.
Daytime telly fans will still be able to get their Lorraine and This Morning fix as both shows will continue to broadcast this week.
Cheltenham Festival begins on Tuesday, March 14 and ITV will show five races live on each of the four days of the horse racing meeting.
The morning show will be shown on ITV4 on the morning of each race day, with coverage then moving to ITV1 at 1pm and finishing at 4.30pm each day.
The last Loose Women this week aired on Monday afternoon, with host Ruth Langsford joined by Janet Street-Porter, Katie Piper and Brenda Edwards.
In the episode, the Loose Women panel discussed the latest developments in the impartiality row between the BBC and Gary Lineker, with host Ruth saying Lineker and Davie appeared to have ‘kissed and made up’.
Janet said: “I tend to think it’s a typically British compromise, with neither bloke losing face, because it was all about who was going to lose their face.
“I think Tim Davie saying he’s instituting a review of the guidelines is fascinating because these are the guidelines he only introduced in 2020 – not even three years ago.”
Host Ruth noted that might have been because the number of freelancers they now have has increased.
Janet went on to say that ‘nobody comes out of this very well’, adding: “The BBC looks defensive and Gary looks cocky. If you want my opinion, he’s a little bit too pleased with himself.”
Janet then read out Lineker’s statement posted to Twitter, noting there was ‘no real apology’ in the post, which described the last few days as ‘surreal’.
She said: “He’s more or less repeated what he said in the first place that caused the initial row. Then he ends up with a little bit of obsequious fawning to thank Tim Davie.”
She continued: “Gary is great at his job. I agree with everything Gary has said. I just think dragging in the Nazis was a bad idea,” before Ruth clarified that he had referred to 1930s Germany in his initial tweet, as opposed to the Nazis.
