Susanna Reid was congratulated and praised online for how she dealt with a studio guest on Monday’s edition of Good Morning Britain, who called her ‘darling’.
Activist Tracey Mallaghan was invited onto the show to debate the protestor at George Osborne’s wedding to Thea Rogers on Saturday, who threw orange confetti at the newlyweds as they left the church.
Environmental group Just Stop Oil has denied any involvement with the stunt, but tweeted alongside video footage of the moment: ‘You look good in orange @George_Osborne – congratulations to the newlyweds.’
Mallaghan, who is an activist with Insulate Britain, said she would have turned down the request to throw confetti over the couple – but only because non-violence was important to her, and she felt she couldn’t have promised she wouldn’t have ‘slapped’ the former chancellor as well.
She also claimed that Osborne had been ‘really responsible for a lot of terrible media messaging’ when it came to climate denial, telling confused-looking co-host Ed Balls – who was shadow chancellor for Labour for four years, and with whom Osborne is set to launch an economics podcast – ‘Do you not know that, Ed?’
Mallaghan later told him that he needed to do ‘a bit of heavy leading’, which caused longtime ITV presenter Susanna to hop in and ask: ‘Go on, tell us what happened?’
‘What happened with what, darling?’ Mallaghan then responded.
After the briefest of pauses, and with a little laugh, Susanna hit back with: ‘Sorry, you don’t need to call me darling.’
Mallaghan then defended her use of the endearment by saying she was ‘working class’, before the discussion continued.
However, plenty of viewers praised Susanna for addressing the comment and shutting it down immediately, as the guest was branded ‘condescending’ and ‘patronising’.
‘The horror on don’t call me DARLING Susanna’s face was brilliant, absolutely made my day,’ shared someone else, adding the hashtag ‘#dontcallmedarling’.
