10 TV Presenters With Dark Secrets

10 TV Presenters with Dark Secrets

Caitlin Johnson

Welcome to WatchMojoUK, and today we’re looking at the things TV presenters never wanted us to know.

Jermaine Jenas

In 2024, footballer turned pundit and presenter Jermaine Jenas was brutally sacked by the BBC. After four years co-hosting “The One Show”, he was ousted, discovering the news while live presenting the radio. It turned out that Jenas had been sending racy, inappropriate texts to two women working on the programme, cheating on his wife Ellie Penfold. In the aftermath of the scandal, Jenas stepped away from broadcasting to do some work on himself, publicly apologising to the women and to his wife. In early 2025 he returned to presenting on talkSPORT, and seems to have done a lot of soul-searching and managed to keep his marriage intact.

Gregg Wallace

Most of the public had no idea of the extent of Gregg Wallace’s weird behaviour until it all came spilling out in 2024. This was after a handful of more private scandals about his actions, but eventually, dozens of allegations made against Wallace – the product of an extensive internal investigation after the BBC sacked him – were upheld. He then said that actually, he was being discriminated against for being autistic, and that he was in a vulnerable position because, during his time on “MasterChef”, nobody realised this and sent him to get diagnosed. He’s now suing the BBC over what he calls a “terrible injustice”, because he wasn’t protected enough from his own propensity to take his trousers off.

Paul Hollywood

Don’t let those blue eyes fool you: Paul Hollywood has had his share of scandals. Yes, the baking legend is a dirty dog, splitting up with his first wife Alexandra TWICE – once after an affair he had with the co-host of the short-lived “American Baking Competition”, Marcela Valladolid. After that was finally all over in 2019, Hollywood – then in his early fifties – got a girlfriend thirty years younger than him. He’s now remarried to his second wife, but went on the record in 2022 saying that cheating on Alexandra was, quote, “the biggest mistake of his life”. He’s one of the few presenters with a salacious personal life who’s weathered the storm.

Ed Mitchell

During his time working for various news outlets as a business correspondent, including the BBC and Channel 4, Ed Mitchell was grappling with something harrowing behind the scenes: alcohol dependency. He eventually lost his job over his drinking and seven years later, was discovered sleeping rough in Hove having filed for bankruptcy and lost his home. He wrote a book and was the subject of a documentary where he raised awareness for these issues, and eventually began presenting again in 2014. It just goes to show that you just never know what people are dealing with behind-the-scenes, and how easy it is to lose everything.

Tim Westwood

Britain’s strangest radio DJ started facing scrutiny for some alleged actions back in 2020, though this was after he’d already tried to keep his age a secret, once lying to the newspapers and saying he was 27 when he was really 43. He also keeps generally quiet on his background, since he spent his childhood being raised by a vicar in Norfolk rather than being a roadman in South London. But in the 2020s the police started investigating him, following numerous allegations of sexual offences. In October 2025, five years after investigations began, he was formally charged with multiple offences relating to seven different women. He ultimately pleaded not guilty, with a trial set for January 2027.

Russell Brand

There’s always been a lot of darkness around Russell Brand, going back to the beginning of his fame when he spoke candidly about poverty and substance misuse. But, like Tim Westwood, the 2020s haven’t been kind to him. After moving to Florida and rebranding himself as a guru of mindfulness and alternative medicine, he became the subject of a documentary and newspaper investigation in 2023, accused of serious sexual offences. Police investigated and unearthed a bevy of new claimants. He’s pleaded not guilty, and is now waiting until mid-2026 for his case to be heard by the courts.

Martin Bashir

He was keeping one enormous secret for twenty years: the fact that he’d defrauded the late Diana, Princess of Wales to attain THAT “Panorama” interview. We all know the story now, that Bashir tricked Diana and her brother, Earl Spencer, with doctored bank statements suggesting that her friends were selling stories about her to the papers. He got a BAFTA for it, but eventually, the truth came out and an inquiry was launched, ultimately finding him guilty of deceit. He had his BAFTA taken off him, and was lucky that the Met didn’t pursue criminal charges over what happened.

Ant McPartlin

In 2015, the first half of Ant and Dec was set on a dark path after some routine surgery went wrong. He developed a dependence on prescription painkillers and alcohol, a problem that rapidly spiralled out of control. He was keeping it so well hidden that he was taking illicit substances even before presenting his programmes. Just when it looked like everything was behind him and he’d completed rehab, he was arrested for drink-driving, pleading guilty and paying an enormous fine, leading to a second stint in rehab. By all accounts, though, he’s been doing alright since then. It’s lucky that nobody was seriously harmed in that car crash.

Phillip Schofield

There were murmurs of Phillip Schofield’s same-sex affair for years, with the tabloids sniffing around him long before this scandal was dragged into the light. In 2023, headline news was made when he finally admitted to the affair, promptly resigning from all of his television jobs – or being let go, according to his own version of events. A media circus ensued, with the story getting so sensational that Holly Willoughby was forced to make a public address on “This Morning”, denouncing her former co-host as a liar. In hindsight, it all got extremely out of hand, with various pundits saying that the gutter press’s feeding frenzy was an overreaction.

Huw Edwards

Once the BBC’s safest pair of hands, everything came crashing down for Huw Edwards in 2023 when The Sun published a story about a 17-year-old Edwards had allegedly been in contact with. It turned out that everything The Sun was saying was true, and worse. Edwards immediately vanished from screens and was eventually hit with a criminal conviction for making indecent images, pleading guilty to the offences and getting a suspended sentence and going on the register. His wife has also left him, and the BBC re-edited an episode of “Doctor Who” to expunge him. We’d be surprised to ever see him on TV again.

Let us know in the comments what list you want us to do next.