Richard Madeley has issued a statement after questioning whether death threats made to Labour leader Keir Starmer were a “big deal”.
During Tuesday’s edition of Good Morning Britain, the TV presenter anchored a discussion about Starmer’s revelation he’d received threats to his life.
This came in the wake of Boris Johnson’s false accusation that Starmer had been more focused on prosecuting journalists rather than serial sex offender Jimmy Savile during his previous job as the director of the public prosecutions.
Debating the matter on Tuesday, GMB regular Andrew Pierce suggested: “Well I think politicians get that all the time. All the time.”
“Well, I was going to say – is that that big a deal?” Richard then asked, to which Andrew responded: “No.”
Following the exchange, many viewers spoke out against the pair’s comments, which Richard addressed at the beginning of the following day’s show.
Richard began the show by thanking viewers for their “lovely messages” in response to the announcement that his daughter Chloe Madeley and son-in-law James Haskell are expecting a child, which was also announced during Tuesday’s show.
“Listen, it was a really busy show yesterday, we had so much to do,” he continued. “I just want to say one thing very quickly at the top here.
“I tried to pose a question in one of our early discussions on the programme about how prolific online death threats are. I didn’t actually quite address it properly, I didn’t go into it enough.”
He added: “I just want to reiterate the obvious statement that death threats clearly are never acceptable.”
Richard then swiftly moved the conversation along to a discussion about Prince Andrew and the fact he and accuser Virginia Giuffre had reached a settlement in the civil case against him.
Good Morning Britain airs every weekday from 6am.