Loose Women panellist Coleen Nolan, 55, discussed a variety of topics including discrimination in the industry during a chat with Beverley Callard, Ann Summers CEO Jacquline Gold and Melanie Blake this week. Sharing her own experience, the mother-of-three said she was once old she’s “too big” for primetime television.
The presenter revealed: “I have had a head of a big TV company saying, ‘If you want to get in primetime television you should get a gastric band, you’re too big to present primetime’.
“I’ve had, ‘Oh, you’re getting on a bit now, so maybe you’re not right for primetime’.”
Coleen went on to point out that some men on primetime TV are “overweight” or “in their 60s and 70s”.
“There doesn’t seem to be any women of a certain age or a certain size in primetime,” she added.
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Speaking at A Girls Night In with Melanie Blake, a live online event to launch the latter’s new book Ruthless Women, she added: “It’s better than it was years ago.
“But equally, if you look at Loose Women, there isn’t another show on any channel that has that range of women all at once presenting a TV show.”
Coleen rose to fame as a member of the girl group The Nolans with her sisters.
She has since gone on to become a television personality and author.
At the time, Coleen said she was determined to get her health back on track and would also give up smoking.
Last year, she said she was more “confident now than ever” about her body.
“I’ve stopped caring about whether I’m aesthetically pleasing to other people,” she told Good To Know.
“As long as I’m happy and I feel good, then that’s all I’m bothered about.”
She went on to say there was a “massive pressure” to look a certain way in the industry.
Coleen has since found love with a man eight years younger than her, following her divorce from second husband Ray in 2018.
The Loose Women star said Melanie Blake’s new book Ruthless Women has boosted her sex drive.
She spilled: “It made me realise that I am actually still alive from the waist down.
“For many years I thought I was quite dead and Ruthless Women has made me brought it back too life and made me very excited about lockdown ending and getting back out there!”
Ruthless Women by Melanie Blake is out now.
