Richard Madeley has opened up about his strained relationship with his father, describing his dad as "broken" after a dark family secret.
The GMB host, 65, has said that he thinks that his dad Christopher Holt Madeley was sexually abused when he was sent to boarding school as a teenager.
He believes that this led to his dad being left "broken" and "f***ed up" and may have led his dad to hit him "five or six times a year" with a bamboo stick.
Speaking to The Sunday Times Magazine, he said: "That went on until I was about nine or ten and he went a bit too far, hit me too many times, and my mother had a word and that was that.
“I just want to put that in context. I didn’t feel it was out of the ordinary — other boys got hit by their parents — but I didn’t like it. I wish it hadn’t happened.
"My father was basically f***ed up by boarding school. He was a very happy farmer’s boy, but when he was 15 my grandparents discovered he had the beginnings of a girlfriend, which they thought the road to perdition, so they packed him off to this ghastly place."
He continued to explain that it had been during the war and his dad had been considered at "outsider" as the rest of the boys would have known one another since prep school, while he spoke with a Shropshire accent.
Richard added: "I have a strong suspicion he was sexually abused in some way. He never said that but there were some pointers along the way."
The presenter said that his dad had been "very unhappy" there and felt "betrayed" by his parents for making him go there.
Christopher had died aged 49 while Richard had been on honeymoon with his first wife.
After his death, Richard said that his mum claimed he had never got over it, adding: "It broke him".
