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Andrea McLean has announced on air she is “saying goodbye to Loose Women” after 13 years presenting the ITV show.
The 51-year-old wiped away tears as she told viewers she would leave the lunchtime talk show at Christmas.
“Last year I had a nervous breakdown,” she said on Monday’s programme. “What I felt is that this year, collectively, the world has had a breakdown.
“It made me stop and think, ‘What do I actually want?’ You get one life, are you living it the way that you want?”
She went on: “Are you doing everything that you want to do? Are you being brave? Are you taking chances? And I realised, no.
McLean joined the show in 2007 and is one of its main hosts. She said it was her decision to leave to concentrate on her website and brand.
It was a “big decision to jump” but that she would never know if she would “fall or fly” unless she tried, she explained.
McLean is the author of three books, including 2018’s Confessions of a Menopausal Woman, and the co-founder of a female empowerment site called This Girl Is On Fire.
This Girl Is On Fire is also the name of her most recent book, which was published earlier this year with the subtitle How to Live, Learn and Thrive in a Life You Love.
While promoting the book on Loose Women in September, McLean spoke about the nervous breakdown she had while filming Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins in 2019.
“Some really traumatic things that have happened to me in my life… I had put them in a box,” she told her co-presenters.
“When I did [Celebrity] SAS the box opened and I couldn’t get everything back in again. That’s what I was dealing with.”
