AJ Pritchard faced online backlash after making his GB News presenting debut on Saturday, 3 October, when the 31-year-old hosted The Saturday Five. The reaction turned his first appearance into more than a one-off presenting slot.
During the segment, he said: "I think the worrying thing [is] if you live or work in a city, you see [theft] all the time," and added: "Somebody walks into a shop, they pick up their meal deal, they fill their pockets with something, and they walk out. Nobody stops them." Those remarks sat inside a debut that immediately drew attention away from the format and onto the move itself.
Strictly in 2016 to 2019
Pritchard was a professional dancer on Strictly Come Dancing from 2016 to 2019, left the programme in 2020 to pursue presenting opportunities with Curtis Pritchard, and had already built a public profile beyond dance. In 2018, he appeared on the cover of Attitude and was paired with Pasha Kovalev for Strictly’s 16th season, which gave his career a visible link to LGBTQ representation that some viewers brought back into the argument over GB News.
That history is why the criticism landed quickly. Some viewers objected to him joining GB News despite that earlier profile, and the move was read by those critics as a mismatch between the broadcaster and the public image he had built through Strictly Come Dancing, Attitude, and his work with AJ Pritchard and Curtis Pritchard on RuPaul’s Drag Race UK for the Series 1 finale.
GB News and 2020
By 2020, Pritchard had already shifted into presenting and later added appearances on I’m a Celebrity… Get Me Out of Here! in 2020 and Celebrity SAS: Who Dares Wins in 2022. That makes the GB News debut less like a sudden reinvention and more like another step in a run of TV pivots, but this one arrived with sharper scrutiny because the channel has attracted criticism over its coverage of LGBTQ issues and has been subject to Ofcom investigations and rulings concerning due impartiality and other broadcasting standards.
For viewers who followed Pritchard as a Strictly figure, the practical question is not whether he can present — he clearly can — but why he chose this broadcaster for the next stage of that career. Until he addresses that move publicly, the online response will define the story more than the programme itself.
