Fern Britton, the beloved former This Morning presenter, has opened up about the sexual harassment she endured early in her TV career, her sudden resignation from the show, and how she has found peace in her 60s. Now 69, Britton lives in Cornwall, writes novels, and rings bells at her local church.
Frank Bough’s crude comment
Britton recalled an incident with Frank Bough, the Breakfast Time anchor later sacked over a drugs and sex workers scandal. At a team lunch, he told her: “I wonder how long it’ll be before I’m having an affair with you. Because I do have a very big cock.” Britton said she just thought “strange, silly man.” She added that such behavior was common: “We just grew up with all the bottom pinching, all the being pinned up against a wall and trying to be snogged, grappled with in a lift.”
Leaving This Morning abruptly
Britton resigned from This Morning in 2009 without warning, amid rumors of a feud with co-host Phillip Schofield. She said: “It was a day that turned on a sixpence, and suddenly I thought, ‘I’ve got to get out of here’.” She described the rift as “hard, very difficult, very upsetting.” Of Schofield’s later downfall over a relationship with a younger ITV employee, she said: “It was very mixed emotions … I wish him well. I hope it all settles down.”
Sexual assault and resilience
In her 2008 memoir, Britton wrote about being raped multiple times by a man she had just met when she was 21. She didn’t report it because “I didn’t have bruises and he didn’t hit me.” She only realized it was rape about 10 years later. Her daughters, she says, are “really feminist, very strict, and they’ve taught me a lot.”
Impostor syndrome and therapy
Despite a successful career, Britton says she has no confidence. “I look as if I have.” She credited weekly therapy with helping her: “Life feels lighter and easier, and you can be kinder. Forgiving people, and hope that they will forgive you for the shit you’ve done.”
Life now
Britton is working on her 12th novel and presents Fern Britton: Inside the Vet’s on ITV. She loves her Cornish village, bellringing, and the freedoms of single life. “I think back to the person who’s still inside me, who I was when I was younger, and it’s still there. And that cheers you up for the day.”
