A ‘Good Morning Britain’ representative has hit back at the founder of the organisation Fathers4Justice, over a “stunt” he pulled during Friday’s show.
Matt O’Connor had been invited on the ITV daytime show for a debate about Father’s Day, specifically whether or not it made sense to have separate days in honour of mums and dads.
However, things quickly got derailed when Matt took the moment to claim he’d been made to feel like an “outcast” behind the scenes at ‘GMB’.
He complained: “I’m just going to say one important thing here, I’ve been made to feel like an outcast today in this studio. I was put, not in the green room with [fellow guest Ollwyn Moran], but I was dumped outside.”
Matt then stood up and told presenters Kate Garraway and Ranvir Singh that he was going to “show them his balls”, at which point the camera cut away, and he pulled out some novelty pink balls from his trousers.
Attempting to diffuse the chaos, Kate insisted that the separation of the guests was for “technical” reasons, insisting: “It’s how we conduct our debates. We always separate guests that are going to be part of the debate.”
Matt then branded the suggestion “rubbish”, noting: “I’ve been coming here for the last 20 years and I’ve never been treated like that. That’s just typical of how we treat fathers.”
‘Good Morning Britain’, it should be noted, has not been on the air in its current incarnation for 20 years, having debuted in 2014.
A spokesperson for ‘Good Morning Britain’ insisted to Metro that Kate’s claims were correct, adding: “Matt O’Connor was invited on to ‘GMB’ this morning to debate the role of Fathers Day in today’s society.
“Rather than engage properly in the debate he decided to pull an obviously pre-planned publicity “stunt”. His unfounded claims on ‘being treated so badly’ were seemingly part of this preplanned ‘stunt’.
“As Kate said, it is the norm to separate guests before taking part in a debate on the programme and as Ranvir said on air we have never had any such comments previously and pride ourselves on treating all of our guests equally well.”
Later this month, a one-off World Cup-centric evening edition of ‘Good Morning Britain’ will air on ITV, with Piers Morgan and Susanna Reid fronting ‘Good Evening Britain’, which aims to “take viewers on a global journey to measure the thoughts of the nation after England take on Belgium”.
‘GMB’ airs every morning from 6am on ITV.