CAROL McGiffin has blasted Loose Women again as she revealed its strict wardrobe rules – and slammed ITV bosses amid budget cuts.
The broadcaster, 65, officially left the ITV Daytime show in 2023 following a contract dispute.
While she’s still pals with her former co-stars, she hasn’t got many good things to say about the higher ups.
Taking a swipe at her former employers, Carol wrote in her Best magazine column: “If those in charge had spent less time obsessing over wardrobe policy and allowed presenters to be themselves, allowing them to say what they think rather than what they wanted them to think, they might not be losing 200+ jobs.”
She went on: “TV bosses, in my experience, love telling their ‘on-screen talent’ what to wear, as well as what to say.
“I did Loose Women for almost 20 years and the mandated dress codes used to exhaust me.”
Carol, who first appeared on the series in 2000 before she quit in 2023, said one fleeting rule they enforced was a ban on bare arms being shown on screen.
She said: “We went from wearing our own clothes to being bought stuff to adhere to ludicrous wardrobe policies like ‘no arms on show’ …
“Presumably because our ageing biceps were morphing into bingo wings which the (male) boss at the time had decided were offensive.
“Another female(!) boss once ordered all the women to wear high heels as well.
“I always loathed being ‘dressed’ or ‘styled’ as they preferred to call it.
“You always had to be coordinated up to the eyeballs in nice slacks, wrap dresses or boiler suits.”
She continued: “It used to make me shudder, nearly as much as the insane amount of waste on unimaginable amounts of clothes that had mostly only been worn once.”
Carol sparked a feud with bosses when she left the show, making multiple rebukes including slamming the series for “shoving woke news down viewers’ throats”.
It comes as ITV announced redundancies across its Daytime TV shows.
More than 220 jobs will be lost as part of the shake-up — almost half of the 450 employed on the four flagship shows GMB, Lorraine, This Morning and Loose Women.
The reshuffle comes amid a desperate cost-cutting drive at the broadcaster, and follows changes already made to its soaps.
