Eamonn Holmes has broken his silence on the Celebrity Gogglebox edit as he opened up about the heartbreak of losing his father.
Eamonn accused the Channel 4 show of ‘atrocious editing’ after he and his wife Ruth Langsford were being filmed watching an emotional scene from BBC One’s Ambulance.
The 60-year-old accused the programme of replacing a heartbreaking scene with a ‘funny’ one.
The ITV host took to Twitter to defend himself straight after the show aired, as he was bombarded with hateful messages where his followers branded him ‘disrespectful’.
Breaking his silence on an Instagram live video with professional footballer Lianne Sanderson, the presenter spoke about the edit as he detailed the devastation of losing his father who ‘died at the side of the road’.
‘It’s been a tough day and if it wasn’t you, I wouldn’t have come on this tonight,’ Eamonn told Lianne.
‘What a powerful story, Ruth is in tears I have welled up, the respect to the controllers and the paramedics.
‘And the story is transmitted with me telling my own story about how my dad died on the side of the road.’
He continued: ‘He had a heart attack, with my brother, who was then 10 in the car, not knowing what to do, my mother is there, my brother’s friend is there and my dad slumps out of the car and dies at the roadside.
‘So you can imagine for me how difficult that was to watch, did any of that make the final edit? No, what did make the edit, the young boy brought his dad back to life and then I go to Ruth “I was your ambulance driver once” and so to the public watching that saw me as being disrespectful and I got a tsunami of hatred.’
Gogglebox bosses have since apologised to Eamonn, and have decided to pull the episode from its catch-up service so that they could spend time re-editing the show for future repeats
Eamonn added: ‘I got thousands of complaints which are unjust, and my whole experience and how my father’s death has hung over us, and I thought this is not a fair representation.
‘I put my side out of the story and thankfully people following me saw the justice in all of this.
‘I got an apology today, so the production company have apologised and made it clear that is not what I felt or said..’
A spokesperson for Celebrity Gogglebox told Metro.co.uk: ‘We have apologised to Eamonn over what happened in this week’s episode. We understand and respect Eamonn’s feelings on such a deeply personal story.
‘We have taken the decision to edit the episode for future repeats and All 4. We look forward to working with Eamonn and Ruth for the rest of the series.’
Celebrity Gogglebox returns on Friday at 9pm on Channel 4.
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