Broadcaster Richard Bacon says he was mortified when his children asked their Amazon Alexa about him – and the machine told them of his past cocaine shame.
The 44-year-old television presenter was famously fired from hosting children’s TV show Blue Peter in 1998 after admitting to taking the Class A drug.
The Mirror reports that his children were curious about their father and decided to ask the family Alexa – an electronic virtual assistant programmed to answer questions – about their father.
When the machine began to mention Richard’s past with illegal substances, he was forced to spring in to action to shut the device down.
Mansfield-born Richard recounted the moment to Andy Coulson on the podcast Crisis? What Crisis?
He said: “I am sitting in a room in my house in Los Angeles and there is one of those Amazon Alexas next to me and my kids said, ‘Oh Alexa, who is Richard Bacon?’
“And it comes up straight away, ‘Richard Bacon is an English television presenter. He was fired from Blue Peter in 1998 for taking…”
“I jumped in and said, ‘Alexa stop. Stop’. They said, ‘What are you saying stop for? Why did you get fired?’. And then they asked again.”
Richard then commented on his disbelief that his drug scandal past was still at the top of the agenda, 21 years after the event.
The presenter was 22-years-old when he was unceremoniously sacked from Blue Peter after confessing taking cocaine in a London nightclub.
He returned to the show in 2018 for the 60th anniversary of Blue Peter.
Taking to social media at the time, Richard said: “I've hosted a lot of shows in a lot of places.
"And yet the one I have the most affection for is the one I got fired from. Happy Birthday Blue Peter. I love you."
The Mansfield-born presenter, who attended St Peter's Primary School in the town, famously also made the news in July 2018 when he fell ill with a mystery illness during a flight.
At the time, he announced on social media that he had been hospitalised with suspected double pneumonia and thanked the NHS for saving his life.
Richard married marketing manager Rebecca McFarlane in 2008 and they moved to Los Angeles, and have two children together – eight-year-old son, Arthur, and six-year-old daughter, Ivy.
He also regularly spends time in London and occasionally visits Mansfield to see his parents.
