Gino D’Acampo’s former colleague Melanie Sykes took aim at the ITV for ‘creating monsters’ and said she ‘wanted to die’ over her treatment on Celebrity Juice

Melanie Sykes has raged against the TV industry and taken target at an industry that “create monsters.”

The former I’m a Celeb star hit out at a hugely popular ITV show, and also hinted at the investigation into celebrity chef Gino D’Acampo, with whom she used to co-host Let’s Do Lunch with Gino & Mel for the same broadcaster.

“That Celebrity Juice programme was an absolute abomination over a period of years and years and years and years. I wrote about it in my article for my Frank magazine when I turned 50 to say that it encourages men on the street or everywhere to talk to women like s**t,” Melanie said in a YouTube video shared last week, referring to the ITV show hosted by Keith Lemon, which came to an end in 2022.

Melanie Sykes she ‘wanted to die’ while listening to ‘atrocious’ comments made to her on Celebrity Juice ( 
Image:
We Love TV)
She added: “I myself had to endure a whole show of listening to a 500-strong audience laugh at some atrocious things that were said to me and about me. My toes were curling, I wanted to die and I couldn’t leave.

“And you all club together and you all, you know, if you’re going to support somebody’s bad behaviour you create monsters. The industry creates monsters, and then the industry says ‘Oh, we didn’t know.’ You did know!” The Mirror has reached out to ITV for comment.

Melanie, who has said that she stepped back from TV following a comment made by Gregg Wallace on Celebrity MasterChef, said: “Your silence creates monsters, because they honestly genuinely believe – I put it on something the other day, a boundary crossed ceases to be a boundary to these people.

“If you’ve just gone that little bit too far and nobody pulled you up on it, you’ve got no reason to believe that you can’t go even further. And if you’re paid to have that kind of outrageous out in the name of entertainment, again why would you think you need to curb it.”

The star looked back at working with Gino D’Acampo, saying that the TV industry ‘creates monsters’ by ignoring or encouraging poor behaviour ( 
Image:
TV Grab)
Mel then obliquely referred to Gino, after news emerged that over 40 people have allegedly come forward with complaints of inappropriate conduct against the former This Morning star.

“Years ago there was some kind of rumblings about the presenter that everybody’s talking about at the moment, went to some kind of etiquette media training because he’s Italian and the translation, he’s not quite getting it… it’s an insult to Italians. A stupid way of dealing with it. A very narrow-minded, dumb**s way of responding to bad behaviour from a human being in the workspace.”

She added: “I remember once when Gino said to me he can just go up to the powers that be and knock on the door and go in, he doesn’t need a meeting. He was quite pleased with himself that he could do that.

“I feel like I was in a war zone in that industry – 24 years of battling through an industry that didn’t feel right to me anyway. If you’re spending all your time cleaning up people’s s***, just clean the house, clean out the house and start again, that’s all I’m saying.”