Vernon Kay has claimed he and Tess Daly have “moved on” from his 2010 sexting scandal.
Back in 2010, the Family Fortunes host was accused of sexting Page 3 model Rhian Sugden.
After the scandal erupted, the father-of-two publicly apologised to his wife Tess, and their daughters Phoebe and Amber.
Ahead of his stint on I’m A Celeb, which kicks off this Sunday, Vernon was asked if he wants to clear up any misconceptions about him during his time on the show.
Speaking to the Mirror, Vernon replied: “There isn’t a hidden side to me. I’ve been on telly for 20 years and my career started on a reality show.”
“All that stuff is in the past, we’ve forgotten about that, we’ve moved on. It’s all gone. It’s disappeared.”
Vernon said he hopes to have candid discussions with his campmates about the “positive” and “negative” things that have happened in his life.
“I think that’s why I’m hoping this camp will be an open forum with no judgement on what people have done in the past and the present and how they’ve moved on from it,” he said. “Everyone has moved on. All that stuff is in the past.”
View this post on Instagram
Vernon’s comments come just months after Rhian Sugden admitted the sexting scandal “ruined” her career.
The 33-year-old tearfully opened up about the scandal in a Channel 4 documentary, Page Three: The Naked Truth.
The model said she doesn’t think it’s fair that Vernon “got away with it” after he made a public apology to his wife Tess Daly.
“He just got away with it. It ruined everything for me. I felt like I was going up and up with my career and then that came along. I wish I’d never met him,” she said.
“He got to give an apology on the radio and just got to carry on, with Family Fortunes, ironically. It still makes me feel sick.”
Rhian then recalled how the TV presenter pursued her over text, after meeting in Manchester.
“There was an attraction there for both of us. I was a Page Three girl and he was Vernon Kay. He’s a good looking fella,” she said.
“He came to Manchester and that was the first night we’d met. Things just stemmed from there.”
“It was all probably more bravado on text from him when he’d had a drink. ‘Oh you look fit in that picture, sexy, wish I could see you more.’”
The Page Three model also described the backlash she received when the messages were leaked to the press.
“And then obviously it went into the newspaper. We were front-page news because we’d been sex texting each other,” she explained.
“If I’d met this man, slept with him and had a full-blown affair with him then I would understand the backlash. It was like I’d literally killed somebody.”
