Toxic ITV will destroy itself, says Jason Gardiner as he claims Dancing On Ice bosses threatened to throw him off air
JASON Gardiner has hit out at the “toxic culture” inside ITV, where Dancing On Ice producers threatened to throw him off air just hours before show time.
The ex-judge on the contest — hosted until recently by Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby — has revealed bosses cornered him in his dressing room for a fiery confrontation over his feud with celeb skater Gemma Collins.
And in the wake of the Schofield scandal he has blasted the broadcaster, saying: “The fish rots from the head . . . there’s a lot of toxic people still in control.”
In an exclusive interview, Jason, 51, told The Sun on Sunday: “ITV has its Be Kind campaign and has made this big push for male mental health — but it’s all bulls**t.
“There was no consideration for my mental health, my well-being, what I was going through.
“The thing that is so distasteful to me is that I worked hard for them, I gave them great shows, and I know that I helped make that show a success.
READ MORE ON ITV
“I believe this toxic culture will destroy itself. This is opening Pandora’s box, and rightly so.”
Jason was one of the original judges on Dancing On Ice when it launched in 2006 and delighted fans with his witty takedowns for more than a decade.
But the Aussie sensationally quit in 2019 after the feud with Gemma, 42, left him feeling “isolated and hung out to dry” by channel bosses.
'LEFT HIGH AND DRY'
Jason says the culture became “progressively worse” in his final three years on the show, with producers egging him on to live up to his “Mr Nasty” persona but then failing to support him at the first whiff of controversy.
Most read in News TV
He said: “I was getting a lot of mixed signals. And that’s the thing, they played with me.
“If I wasn’t nasty enough, I was called in after the show, frogmarched in, and sat down like, ‘What’s happening with you? We haven’t hired you to be nice. We’ve got four other people that will just be very nice and say nothing’.
“So I knew my place, I was put in my place.”
He says the “final straw” came when Essex diva Gemma accused him of selling stories about her during a live show — and producers failed to back him.
Jason said: “I’ve skin as thick as a rhino but this accusation, live on air, was beyond the pale.
“They knew the facts, they knew it was a total lie but they decided — and this is what they told me — that they didn’t want to weigh in and make a statement because it would give it ‘gravitas’.
“They needed to protect the brand but no one cared about protecting me.
“I had a hellish two weeks. The vitriol that was launched against me . . . people were hurling abuse in the street. I have never felt so isolated.”
A lawyer pal told him he had a “strong defamation case” against Gemma if he wanted to pursue it.
Feeling unsupported by ITV, the unflinchingly honest star informed his Dancing On Ice producers he was considering potential action as they had rejected his requests for a statement.
But while getting ready for the following week’s show he says Katie Rawcliffe, the head of entertainment at ITV, went to his dressing room.
Jason recalls: “She repeatedly asked me if I was planning on taking it forward. I told her I was considering it.
“I said, ‘I haven’t been backed by ITV. You’ve left me high and dry here. I’ve been slandered across several platforms now’, because by then it had moved on to Loose Women and GMB, all these ITV presenters were jumping in on it.
“It was getting very, very nasty, very dark.”
Jason claims Katie left to speak to the ITV legal department and returned shortly after, warning that if he went ahead he would be in breach of his contract and axed from the show.
Things became heated and Jason ordered her out of his dressing room.
She returned for a third time, with ITV’s head of entertainment commissioning, Siobhan Greene, known as Shu.
Jason said: “I told them, ‘I’m being given an ultimatum here and I don’t like it. I feel like you’re threatening me and I’ve got to go on and do a show’.
“Shu said, ‘We need to know. Because we need to get a replacement if you’re going to move forward with what you want to move forward with’.
"And my mind was blown. I couldn’t believe it. It was highly pressured and stressful, I felt sick to my stomach. So I backed down because I had no support.”
An ITV source disputed this version of events, saying: “This was part of a wider conversation outlining the possible ramifications of legal action, and it was felt it would be inappropriate for him, as a celebrity judge, to be judging an individual contestant against whom he was pursuing a legal case.
“This was no way intended to be seen as unsupportive, more a transparency about the process.”
ITV also came under fire this month over comments made by This Morning editor Martin Frizell.
When asked whether there was a toxic atmosphere on his show, he replied: “I’ll tell you what’s toxic — aubergine.”
After the series concluded in March 2019 Jason was “so low that I needed to find who I was again”.
He went to a wellness retreat in Austrian capital Vienna and made the decision to quit.
Jason said: “I’d had this incredible breakthrough, I broke down and cried. I called my agent and said, ‘I don’t want to go back. I don’t want to be involved in that toxicity. I don’t want to work with those people again’.”
He is now willing to assist barrister KC Jane Mulcahy with her independent investigation into This Morning in the wake of the Phillip Schofield situation.
Jason said: “I would happily talk to her, she can give me a call. The fish rots from the head . . . there’s a lot of toxic people still in control.
“Nobody should have to go through that stuff at work. To be bullied, to be pressured, to be threatened like I was is completely unprofessional and unacceptable.”
Jason’s exit from Dancing On Ice gave him the push he needed to reinvent himself.
He moved to rural Portugal in late 2020 and became an eco-farmer after studying permaculture and ecology.
We meet on the east coast of Spain, a two-hour drive from his current project in the mountains, where he has been hired to create the ultimate ecohome for a couple relocating from the UK.
He lives alone, rising at 5am for yoga and meditation, and spends the rest of his day tending to the land.
He said: “I can’t get enough of this way of living. I love it, I feel very empowered. It’s far more nurturing than TV.
“I don’t want people to think I’m speaking to you for publicity, I’m very happy in my life now.
Read More on The Sun
“I just want this toxic culture to stop. And there are going to be more casualties if this isn’t properly addressed.
"They can’t just gloss over it any more.”
