TV star Coleen Nolan addressed her Loose Women exit in a new interview.
The 60-year-old appeared on Joe Baggs’ podcast, Not My Bagg, yesterday (January 13), where she opened up about leaving the ITV daytime show.
Coleen Nolan on Loose Women exit
Coleen first joined Loose Women in 2000 and has remained as one of the show’s regular panelists.
However, in 2011, the Irish singer decided to suddenly leave and explained to host Joe why.
Admitting that she had no intentions to return, Coleen said she packed her things because she had been “doing it for a long time”.
“I was starting to fall out of love with it a bit,” she admitted, stating that it started to feel like an effort turning up for work every day.
“I genuinely thought, ‘I’m gonna leave!'” Coleen continued.
During her departure, Coleen ventured out, explaining that she worked on This Morning and signed up for Celebrity Big Brother.
Two years after waving goodbye to Loose Women, Coleen returned to the show in 2013.
“I went back feeling refreshed, and since then, genuinely, I’ve loved it. I’ve never gone through that stage again,” she said.
Coleen said leaving was a “scary decision” to make, but confessed that “life is too short to be somewhere where you’re not happy”.
‘The atmosphere was a bit low’
Last year, ITV announced huge cuts across its daytime TV programmes, and Loose Women was affected.
The show has ditched its studio audience, staff have been let go, and the one-hour programme will only broadcast for 30 episodes a year.
While exclusively speaking to ED!, Coleen admitted that “everyone was a bit in shock” when they found out.
“Unfortunately, the world we live in at the moment isn’t great for anyone. Jobs are going everywhere in every career, so it was hard to see work colleagues that I’ve known for 20-odd years or even the last couple of years lose their jobs behind the scenes. At first, the atmosphere was a bit low. But now, what I love about them is that they still give their all every single day on this show,” she said.
Despite her colleagues’ hard work ethic, Coleen confessed that she may not have reacted in the same way.
“I don’t know if I’d have been that good,” she shared, adding: “I think I’d have gone: ‘You know what? You can stick it!’ But they didn’t. They come in every day, and they do exactly the best job that they’ve done for the last 20-odd years.”
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