Former Loose Women panelist Saira Khan has claimed bosses asked her to make a profile for the soft porn site OnlyFans as a PR stunt, admitting this to be the real reason she left the show.
The 52, year-old said the “shocking” request made her reach breaking point as Saira alleges this was one of many desperate attempts to draw in viewers as rating slipped. She further claimed that she was asked to have a mould made of her vagina for a Body Stories campaign for the daytime panel programme.
Saira alleged bosses cared more about viewing figures than her mental health, as the channel has faced previous scrutiny in the wake of Jeremy Kyle and Love Island scandals, following the suicides of contestants.
Speaking to the Mirror about ITV culture, Saira claims:
- She would frequently go home crying over producers’ unreasonable requests
- She was used as clickbait to help get the show recommissioned and bosses would “rub their hands with glee” at negative stories
- She was offered no support when she became a target for trolls and threats to her family’s safety.
Saira said: “The straw that broke the camel’s back was when one of the young producers was sent running after me to ask whether I would be prepared to open an OnlyFans account.” OnlyFans is a site where users post soft porn images of themselves for cash.
“To say I was shocked was an understatement,” Saira added. “I could see she herself was mortified to ask me. I replied, ‘You’re asking an Asian woman who has a husband and kids and comes from a Muslim family to open an OnlyFans account?’
“She said, ‘It’s just on your social media you’ve been posting images in your underwear and we thought if you could go undercover to see the kind of response you get from men, it would make a great story’.
“There and then, I knew my time was up on the show. I felt humiliated, angry, disappointed and like fodder.”
As she writes in her Sunday Mirror column today, Saira says she decided to speak out after Fearne Cotton’s decision to step back from TV and radio to preserve her mental health.
ITV has come under mounting pressure over the mental health of employees after a series of high-profile suicides, including that of former Love Island host Caroline Flack aged 40. And The Jeremy Kyle Show was axed in 2019 after Steve Dymond, 63, killed himself just seven days after taking part in the programme.
Mum-of-two Saira said: “The system is toxic. They do not have people who have the expertise to introduce wellbeing and mental health care.”
She told of her humiliation when asked to pose for a mould of her vagina. Members of the Loose Women panel and production team contributed to a piece of artwork made up of plaster moulds of female genitalia to encourage women to accept their vaginas are “normal”.
Despite repeatedly refusing and saying she was uncomfortable with it, she claims she continued to be harassed by producers. “They just saw me as PR fodder with no respect for my background or culture,” she said.
Saira also complained that an underwear photo of herself was used in another campaign without her having approved it.
She said: “I love TV presenting, but I knew that for the sake of my mental health and my family, I just could not carry on in such toxic working conditions.”
She claimed that the culture of Loose Women encouraged the presenters to argue which made her “into a bitchy person I don’t want to be”. She added: “I started to realise they just wanted me to tick the box of ‘gobby Muslim woman’.”
Saira, who quit the show last year, claimed comments taken out of context would be packaged up and used as clickbait, and often she would have to deal with the subsequent trolling and death threats. “I was never sat down and reassured to make sure I was OK,” she said.
A spokesman for Loose Women said: “We strongly refute all of these claims. Duty of care is of paramount importance for all of our panellists. Saira left the panel almost two years ago and we wish her well.”
A source added: “Loose Women Investigates is a strand which has seen reports into a range of topics. Sites such as OnlyFans could always potentially be the subject of an investigation. The Body Stories campaign tackled the taboo of vagina dysmorphia back in 2017. Saira was not involved in this campaign.
“We were told Saira was leaving to focus on her ‘businesses and online’ and that ‘she has nothing but good things to say about the show'. We are therefore surprised to hear these claims.”
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