Richard Madeley returned to Good Morning Britain on Monday morning sporting a cast on his right arm, after suffering a double fracture to his wrist during a fall in France.
The 69-year-old broadcaster, who was back co-hosting the ITV show alongside Susanna Reid, addressed the injury at the top of the programme after viewers spotted the cast poking out from beneath his suit jacket.
Reid said: “Richard you better explain.”
“I thought you were going to say, ‘Did I have a good break!’” he joked.
Before explaining: “It’s a double fracture of the wrist. I was walking quite quickly down a steep pavement in France on Friday, and the pavement was loose.
“It flipped up, and it flipped me forward.”
He continued: “I thought, am I going to win or will gravity win? And gravity won. I hit the ground hard.
“So yeah I've got a double fracture and we'll see how it goes.”
When Reid asked whether the injury was painful, Madeley replied with a smile: “"I'm not discussing the pain threshold we just don't think about pain.”
His injury comes after it was reported that Madeley was forced to renegotiate his role on GMB to avoid being axed from the programme amid ITV’s ongoing ‘bloodbath’ of cuts.
The daytime TV presenter has agreed to a new part-time deal to stay on the show.
This comes amid a massive shake-up of ITV’s daytime programming, with cuts described by an inside source as a “bloodbath” set to lose more than 220 jobs amounting to nearly half the current staff of these shows.
A source told the Sun: “This one has really rocked the ITV corridors because Richard is such a big name and a legend of daytime telly.
“On Wednesday, word started to spread he’d been axed, that his contract wasn’t going to be renewed when it expired in December, so there was a great deal of shock.”
Adding: “But, by Friday, it became apparent Richard had a meeting with the network’s most senior bosses and he’s now being kept on in a more part-time role.
“He’s got himself back on the show — but his hours are significantly cut.”
Good Morning Britain will be extended by 30 minutes, running from 6am to 9:30am. For the 22 weeks that Lorraine is not airing, GMB will take over the additional half hour, continuing until 10am.
Madeley had been expected to remain in retirement after having co-hosted ITV’s This Morning show from 1988 to 2001.
He made an unexpected return to daytime television in 2021 when he replaced Piers Morgan following a row over Harry and Meghan which saw Morgan leave the show.
