10 Most Offensive Moments on Daytime TV

10 Most Offensive Moments on Daytime TV

Caitlin Johnson

Welcome to WatchMojoUK, and today we’re looking at the most outrageous and complained-about things to happen on daytime television.

Negative Energy

“This Morning” (1988-)

Television’s weirdo-in-chief Noel Edmonds put in an infamous showing on “This Morning” in 2016, to address the controversy he’d caused by claiming on Twitter that negative energy causes cancer. He insisted live on air that that WASN’T what he said, despite the post being on-screen at the time and read out loud to him by Holly Willoughby. He went on, crediting his own experience with “positive energy” as curing his prostate cancer. Positive thinking definitely won’t HURT if you’re suffering from any kind of medical condition, but equally, we’re not sure that telling people on the internet their own cancer is caused by negativity is helping anybody here. There was a lot of backlash to this interview.

Childhood Obesity

“Loose Women” (1999-)

Who’s really to blame for childhood obesity? Don’t ask the “Loose Women” panellists, because you’re not going to get a straight answer – you might not even get a kind answer, because this debate turned very nasty indeed. Jane Moore and Kaye Adams nearly came to blows over this, with Moore blaming the parents, even calling them stupid, while Adams pointed out that poverty and income have huge effects on whether people can or can’t eat healthily. The audience got involved, too, disagreeing with the way Jane was going about making her point. Andrea tried to mediate, but it got massively out-of-control – and the debate still isn’t resolved.

A Selfie with Boris

“This Morning” (1988-)

Perhaps in isolation this moment, while extremely cringe-worthy, wouldn’t have got too many people’s hackles up. But it didn’t happen in isolation. In the run-up to the 2019 election, both party leaders, Boris Johnson and Jeremy Corbyn at the time, appeared on “This Morning” to talk policy and campaigns – each interview had a very different tone, though. The one with Corbyn was confrontational, with Schofield even demanding that Corbyn personally apologise for the ongoing Labour Antisemitism scandal. Boris, meanwhile, got off easy, taking a selfie with Schofield and Willoughby as they wrapped up. They were slated for this, and called out for perceived bias by giving the Tories an easy ride while going for Corbyn’s jugular.

Trump Gets Called Out

“BBC Breakfast” (2000-)

Naga Munchetty is a magnet for complaints, but most of the time, it’s a lot of fuss over nothing. This time, though, the BBC upheld the complaints about Munchetty, which said she’d given a personal opinion on a political matter when she gave her views about Donald Trump telling people of colour to “go home”. Even though Trump isn’t a British politician, people managed to be offended, but the BBC’s handling of the incident left much to be desired, largely because they singled out Munchetty – despite co-host Dan Walker agreeing with her and prompting her to give her opinion in the first place. The complaint was eventually overturned by the Director-General personally.

Spin to Win

“This Morning” (1988-)

It doesn’t seem like the cost-of-living crisis is ever really going to end, despite ITV’s best efforts to do its bit back when inflation first started to spiral out of control in 2022. Somebody high up at “This Morning” decided that putting a big energy bills pay-out on the show’s spin-to-win board was a good idea. We’re sure it was a boon to the bloke who won, but viewers – and the tabloids – all had the same thought: that all this was extremely dystopian. When you’re relying on the slim chance of winning cash on a television show to pay your ordinary household bills, something’s gone badly wrong. ITV swiftly withdrew the energy bills prize from future editions.

Katie Hopkins

“Loose Women” (1999-)

Hot off her appearance on “Celebrity Big Brother”, Katie Hopkins came on “Loose Women” to defend her hard-earned title as the most hated woman in Britain, and she did it masterfully. Specifically, she was there to answer for some appalling comments she made about Linda Nolan, Coleen Nolan’s sister, with the questions put to her by Coleen herself. Hopkins, of course, refused to apologise for mocking Linda Nolan for exhibiting symptoms of breast cancer. Hopkins says that because people insult HER all the time, that gives her carte blanche to insult everybody else; never mind that nobody on “Loose Women” would have sat there and insulted her appearance like that.

Queuegate

“This Morning” (1988-)

Was this a controversy or a nontroversy? We’re not sure, but it certainly left a lot of people irate. During the Queen’s lying-in-state, visitors had to queue for hours to pay their respects, unless they were in possession of special press passes from ITV and could skip the line. That was the privilege afforded to Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield mere months before they both left “This Morning” completely in 2023. It led to an immortal apology from Willoughby where she assured the mourning public that the last thing either of them would do was jump a queue. Only in Britain could queuing etiquette cause so much trouble.

Prank Caller

“The Wright Stuff” (2000-18)

This man was on a mission to upset who was presumably his ex-partner, calling into “The Wright Stuff” repeatedly and putting on a range of different voices to keep getting through. It just goes to show how few people are actually trying to call into Channel 5 in the middle of the day, when he was able to call her out by name at least three times. Sometimes he even got into character and pretended like he was going to answer the question, before dragging Sharon into it again. Matthew Wright was left apologising repeatedly. It makes you wonder whether Channel 5 has caller ID, or whether he was so dedicated that he had numerous SIM cards at his disposal.

Rolf Harris & Vanessa Feltz

“This Morning” (1988-)

After former TV star-turned-convicted criminal Rolf Harris died in 2023, Vanessa Feltz opened up about a disturbing incident she had with him while filming a segment for “This Morning” in 1996. The actual footage from the day isn’t publicly available, only a few pictures, but Feltz has talked at length about the moment he groped her on set. Chillingly, his wife was actually there at the time, standing nearby. Feltz even had to put a cushion between them to try and force Harris to keep his distance. Yet again, we have to wonder how these predators got away with it for so long, committing crimes and crossing personal boundaries in plain sight.

The Death of a Guest

“The Jeremy Kyle Show” (2005-19)

Nothing on daytime TV has been more outrageous than “The Jeremy Kyle Show”, once derided as “human bear-baiting” by a politician. In 2019, production was brought to an immediate and indefinite halt when The Sun broke the story that a man named Steve Dymond had taken his own life only a week after appearing on the programme. The episode was never broadcast, but was later released publicly online as part of the inquest into whether the show – and Kyle himself – bore any culpability. The ruling was that he didn’t, and he’s since gone on to refuse to apologise at every turn while somehow still being wheeled out to host “Good Morning Britain” from time to time.

Let us know which dreadful daytime moments you want us to put in the next video.