Saira Khan claims she left 'Loose Women' because producers wanted her to join OnlyFans.
Saira Khan was unhappy with Loose Women producers
The 52-year-old star quit the progamme last year and has now revealed the "shocking" request for her to join the adults-only platform to go "undercover" was the final straw for her because it left her feeling "humiliated and angry".
She 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.
“To say I was shocked was an understatement. 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.”
Saira was also upset when asked to pose for a mould of her vagina along with other members of the panel and production team as part of an art project.
She claimed she was repeatedly pressured to pose, despite saying she felt uncomfortable.
She added in a column for the Sunday Mirror newspaper: “They just saw me as PR fodder with no respect for my background or culture,” she said.
The former 'Apprentice' contestant - who claimed an underwear photo of her was used in another campaign without her approval - felt she needed to quit for the sake of her mental health because the culture of the show encouraged arguments among the presenters and left her a "b**** person I don't want to be.
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...
I started to realise they just wanted me to tick the box of ‘gobby Muslim woman’.”
A spokesperson for the show "strongly refuted" Saira's claims.
The representative 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.”