Eddie McGuire made my life hell, says Jessica Rowe
Network Ten presenter Jessica Rowe has lashed out at Eddie McGuire over his latest controversial comments, saying he made her life hell.
Rowe’s comments came as the panel on Ten’s morning program, Studio 10, was discussing whether McGuire’s description of Victorian Sports Minister John Eren as a “soccer-loving Turkish-born Mussie” was racist.
Rowe was embarrassed in 2006 when McGuire, her then boss at Channel Nine, reportedly said he wanted to “bone” her.
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She did not hold back when co-presenter Sarah Harris asked: “Are we too quick to label people racist?”
“To me, Eddie McGuire has form and I can talk very much from personal experience,” Rowe said.
“The way he has allegedly used language against me in the past and the way he has used language to describe Adam Goodes [is] highly, highly inappropriate, and then to try and explain it away as, ‘oh, that was a brain snap or a brain freeze’ – no, that is not on.”
McGuire has a history of controversial public comments, including in 2013 when he joked that AFL star Goodes could help promote the musical production of King Kong.
Rowe said she thought the term “Mussie” was racist and offensive.
“If he is not smart enough, and I don’t think he is, to moderate his language depending on the sort of forum he is in, he has to take the flak for it,” she said.
“I’m sorry, I don’t have a lot of good to say about that man because he made my life hell.”