Saira Khan. (Chris J Ratcliffe/Getty Images)
Saira Khan asked Loose Women bosses Sunday (3 January) to replace her with a “gay, transgender or non-binary host” after she announced that she has quit the lunchtime talk show after five years.
In an Instagram post of her cover shoot for Notebook, a supplement of the Sunday Mirror, the British television personality, 50, said she is departing the ITV show.
But with a seat on the beloved panel now empty, she has pleaded network chiefs to replace her with someone “reflective of the world we live in.
“That’s what I would do if I was in charge,” she wrote in the caption.
Saira Khan: ‘ I will eternally be grateful for the platform Loose Women gave me’
She added: “Change comes at the beginning of 2021 by leaving a familiar seat on Loose Women. It wasn’t an easy decision, but one that I needed to make in order to grow myself in other ways.
“I came to the show a troubled soul and I will eternally be grateful for the platform Loose Women gave me to share, speak up and out.
“I will miss the great women who have become my very close friends. I feel honoured and privileged to have sat alongside them and learnt from them.”
‘I don’t like formal goodbyes,” Khan continued, “so I won’t be on the show to look back at my ‘best bits’. That’s not how I want to say goodbye.
“Thank you from the bottom of my heart. You’ve helped shape me, to become the woman I want to be, moving forward. Thank you.”
It comes after Khan announced she was quitting the show in a Saturday (2 January) column for The Mirror, explaining the ongoing coronavirus pandemic tearing into normality prompted her to re-evaluate her priorities.