Ruth Langsford has revealed how she demanded to be paid equally to husband Eamonn Holmes.
The pair have fronted ITV’s ‘This Morning’ together on Fridays and school holidays since 2006, as well as hosting various Channel 5 shows together.
Speaking to The Sun, Ruth said she has learned to negotiate the same wage any male co-presenter she works with, having knowledge of how much Eamonn takes home.
“I insist now on being paid the same. I insist now that I do,” Ruth said.
“But as we all know, in the past I’ve worked not just with Eamonn. The thing is you don’t normally discuss your pay when you’re a co-presenter, but obviously I do with my husband because he’s my husband.
“I basically wouldn’t work for them if they weren’t paying me the same if I’m doing the same job, whether I’m with my husband or any other male co-presenter.”
The gender pay gap in the TV industry came under scrutiny last year when the BBC released the salaries of their top earning stars.
Other channels like ITV are yet to follow suit, as they are not under the same obligation to publish how much talent are paid, as they are not publicly-funded like the BBC.
Last month, former ‘This Morning’ presenter Fern Britton spoke out to deny she quit the hit daytime show in 2009 as co-host Phillip Schofield was paid more than her.
She told Hello magazine: “That certainly wasn’t true, not least because I had no idea what Philip had been paid; I knew what I was being paid and it was more than fair.”
She added: “It is appalling that, if you are doing the same job as a man, you are paid less and I am absolutely all for equal pay but at the time, even if Phillip had been paid more than me, he was doing more programmes on television.”
Phillip continues to present ‘This Morning’ with Holly Willoughby, and last year, he insisted they were both equally paid for their work on the show.
“Absolutely yeah of course, we’re getting paid the same now,” he told the Daily Express. “But you have to remember that when Holly started on ‘This Morning’ I’d been doing it for years and was always sort of the one that had to pull it all through.
“But you know, once Holly was an equal presenter, then absolutely and across the board [there should be equal pay], that is the way it should be for sure.”
