Piers Morgan brands Loose Women ‘sexist’ in Good Morning Britain rant
'It’s fine to have female-branded thing, it’s a problem when it’s the other way round'
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Your support makes all the difference.Piers Morgan has hit out at female-led shows in a rant that culminated with him labelling the programme Loose Women “sexist”.
On Wednesday’s episode of Good Morning Britain, the 53-year-old TV presenter spoke about the recent debate surrounding Fireman Sam, which was criticised this week by The London Fire Brigade for using “gender-specific wording” that it claims is discouraging women from becoming firefighters.
“If females are put off joining the fire service for Fireman Sam, I was put off being an explorer because of Dora,” Morgan quipped, referencing the child’s TV programme Dora The Explorer. He added that by that logic, Call The Midwife should be renamed Call The “Midpersons” or “Midpartners”.
Out of the 5,000 firefighters in London, only 354 are female, prompting the city's fire brigade to launch its "Firefighting Sexism" campaign in 2017 in the hope of achieving gender parity in the industry.
In response to Morgan's remark, GMB co-host Susannah Reid referenced ITV's programme Loose Women as an example of a programme with a specific gender in its title.
This spurred Morgan on further, who went on to ask: “How can I be a loose person if I watch Loose Women, because it’s actively discouraging men from being loose. So therefore it’s sexist. But as always, it’s fine to have female-branded thing, it’s a problem when it’s the other way round.
“Fireman Sam? Evil. Postman Pat? Evil. And don’t get me started on the black and white cat. Doubly racist. But no, Loose Women? Fine. Call The Midwife, fine.”
Reid responded by shaking her head, adding: “Just trying to redress the balance, Piers.”
“Oh yeah, best way to redress the balance is to do the complete thing you’ve moaned about for hundreds of years in reverse,” he replied.
“Best way to deal with any discrimination is to discriminate. Totally agree. Makes perfect sense. We’ve been discriminated against for hundreds of years, so now we’re going to discriminate against you.”
Again, Reid tried to debunk his comments by interjecting: “Just want to achieve some equality.”
Several Twitter users concurred with Morgan’s stance, with one person writing: “He was a bit OTT this morning – but he’s not wrong” while another described the criticisms of Fireman Sam as "pathetically PC".
But one person labelled his rant "shocking", adding: "Three women not allowed to speak while he goes on and on and on. Very telling. I had to switch to the BBC.
"According to his logic we should call people Teacherman or Doctorwoman. Firefighter and Police Officer are not PC, just the job names."
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