Rylan Clark-Neal has spoken of the homophobia he experienced while covering the Eurovision Song Contest earlier this year.
The star presided over the BBC’s coverage of the semi-finals back in May, and as part of that he was interviewed by a broadcaster from another country but the chat was pulled for being “too provocative”.
Recalling the incident on ‘This Morning’, Rylan said he believes this meant they had a problem with his sexuality.
“I did Eurovision a few weeks back and to be fair, you can’t get a gayer show than Eurovision - it’s one big spectacular,” he said.
“But I did one interview out there with a country, I won’t say which country it was, and the BBC had a phone call from that channel that the interview was for, saying ‘We’re not going to use that interview because we thought it was too provocative’, or something like that.
“I thought, ‘How could I have been provocative?’ So what they did, the BBC looked at it back, we had a representative there looking back at it as well, and all I will say is there is an issue which happened in that country in Eurovision and I very much sensed why they didn’t want that interview to go out.
“We believe, I believe, and I have to say it’s my words only, but it was because of my sexuality; because they knew I was gay.”
Rylan was a new addition to the Eurovision presenting team this year, hosting the semis alongside Scott Mills.
However, he was forced to fly home from the Song Contest in Portugal early due to “unforseen circumstances”, later insisting there was “no drama”.