Jonathan Ross has admitted staff on his chat show were ‘scared’ of him.
The broadcaster told how staff members were frightened of being fired from his show after he criticised their work.
Ross – who has previously courted controversy surrounding his on-air antics including the ‘Sachsgate’ scandal – said “I used to think you could say almost anything” and not worry about the consequences.
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The 63-year-old told the Walking The Dog podcast: “I’ve grown markedly more aware of the impact words can have whereas when I was younger, I used to think you could say almost anything because they’re just words.
(Image: Ken McKay/ITV/REX/Shutterstock)
“I also felt like, if I didn’t intend something but you say something as a joke, you kind of thought everyone knew the intention.
“It was a fairly hard one, a difficult learning curve.
“I had a bunch of people working on the show years ago and I wasn’t happy with the people they were suggesting as guests.
“I wanted it to be a slightly broader range, so I said, ‘We should broaden your horizons, we should get someone that’s just got a weird dog, that’s just done a weird thing, they don’t just have to be people that have just got a book out.’
“Then afterwards someone that was in the company with me took me to one side.
“[He’s] a really nice guy called Mike and he said, ‘I know what you’re saying and I kind of agree with you, but the way you’re saying it, they’re all scared of you’.
“I was like, ‘Why are they scared of me? I’m just another person in the office room’.
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“He said, ‘Because it’s your show, and it’s your company, and you’re saying it and they’re thinking you might fire them.’
“I said, ‘But I didn’t say anything along those lines,’ and he said, ‘No, no, but it’s perceived, you’ve let them know you’re dissatisfied with something therefore their next thought is probably, ‘Oh, f***’.
“It hadn’t even occurred to me back then that that would be the way it goes and now it is.
“Now, even if someone is incredibly incompetent in their job, I will not talk to them publicly about it and I would take them to one side.”
He added: “That’s something we should just learn by being older but also because society has changed.
“Certainly I have become, in many ways, a much softer character than I was previously even though I didn’t ever think I was hard in anyway; but I clearly was without realising it.”
Source: Celebrities - dailystar.co.uk
