Saira Khan was a fan favourite on the Loose Women panel as she appeared on the ITV daytime chat show with her strong opinions and eloquent ways of debating tricky topics.
Viewers of the show were left surprised when Saira, 52, announced her decision to quit the ITV daytime show in 2021.
At the time, Saira claimed she made the difficult decision after the coronavirus pandemic sparked her to reassess her priorities.
In her column with the Mirror, Saira explained the pandemic "certainly made me assess my priorities, values and how I want to move forward with my life".
However, since leaving Saira has continued to spill on her time on the show and her reasons for leaving.
Saira is preparing to join Eamonn Holmes on his GB News Breakfast show and will co-host the programme every Monday and Tuesday with former This Morning star Eamonn, 63.
Eamonn announced the news as he posted a photo of the pair smiling widely and wrote: " Your Mon/Tues line up on GB Breakfast.
"Looking forward to hooking up with one of my best friends Saira Khan.
"We will be your presenting duo. Expect the unexpected 6 - 9.30 am," he teased.
As Saira gears up for her new role, we take a look at the reasons why she left Loose Women...
'Life changing' decision
After claiming the pandemic spurred her to throw in the towel in her column with the Mirror, Saira said her time on Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins also sparked her to make the "life changing" decision.
Explaining her reason for leaving the show, Saira said SAS: Who Dares Wins taught her to "depend upon herself".
She told The Sun : "I did take big drastic steps. I left Loose Women and, interestingly, Andrea McLean left Loose Women after doing SAS. It changes your life. You realise you've got to cut through the s**t and start living.
"When you're stripped of everything as a naked woman all you have to depend upon is yourself.
"That's very telling, very strong and most people will never experience that."
'Toxic' row and OnlyFans claims
In October last year, Saira claimed she quit the show after bosses tried to make her join OnlyFans, which is a subscription site where people share adult content to their paid followers.
Saira said the "shocking" request from bosses was the final straw in what she alleges was a string of desperate bids to get publicity for the ITV programme as ratings slipped.
She claimed how she was also asked to have a mould made of her vagina for a Body Stories campaign.
The TV star told the Mirror: Saira 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," Saira added. "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."
However, a spokesperson for Loose Women denied the claims. They 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.”
A source added: "Loose Women Investigates is a strand which has seen reports into a range of topics. Sites such as OnlyFans could always potentially be the subject of an investigation. The Body Stories campaign tackled the taboo of vagina dysmorphia back in 2017. Saira was not involved in this campaign.
"We were told Saira was leaving to focus on her ‘businesses and online’ and that ‘she has nothing but good things to say about the show’.
"We are therefore surprised to hear these claims."
Tensions between the Loose Women
After leaving the show, Saira revealed the panellists aren't as friendly as they appear on screen.
When asked who out of the Loose Women panel she'd stay friends with, Saira said: "You make friends with some people, you tolerate some people, and some people you just have to do the job with."
But, she deflected when grilled on names, replying: "I'm not going to go into the nitty gritty there now. There are some friends, people I will be close to because we get each other.
"And there are some I really don't miss at all, who I was just like, 'I just have to tolerate you to do the job.'"
Saira went on: "You have to be professional about it. You can't pretend that everyone is going to be your best friend. Especially on a show with different opinions, you're not going to tolerate everybody's opinion.
"That's fine. That's not a problem, just do it with respect and you have to be open minded."
She added: "Sometimes I'd go in with an opinion and someone would say something different to me and I'd think "Do you know what I never saw it from that point of view!'"
Following her comments, it was revealed Saira didn't follow Nadia Sawalha or Kaye Adams.
She also added in a chat: "It was a mixture of things. Firstly, I’d outgrown the programme. There were some women that I just thought, “I’ve got to just tolerate you to do the job and in real life you wouldn’t be my friend.”
"They’d say the same about me. Plus, I shared a lot about myself on that show – my abuse, adoption, arranged marriage and a lot of relationship stuff. You don’t get a lot of thanks for that. My family hasn’t asked to be related to someone famous but I felt like I was putting them into a precarious situation."
Online trolling
Saira also revealed how the trolling on social media was a motivation for leaving the programme.
The former panelist previously said: "You’re on there discussing a subject with your friends in a very innocent way, but the amount of trolling you get online is horrendous.
"It just becomes toxic for women. It’s a show for women but I don’t feel like it empowered me."
After walking away Saira revealed she was subjected to much less trolling as she said: "Yes, 100%. I feel much more confident. I feel like on my social media platforms they know me, they get me.
"I’m glowing because I’ve removed myself from the situation that I didn’t want to be in. If you can’t do that by the age of 50, then that’s nobody else’s fault but your own.
"Those women on the telly, they’re happy and that’s perfect for them, but it became too toxic for me and I had to remove myself."
