Judi Love reveals ’emotional’ experience of first all-black Loose Women panel

Judi Love has described the “emotional” experience of taking part in the first all-black panel on Loose Women.

The comedian appeared alongside Charlene White, Brenda Edwards and Kelle Bryan when the ITV show made history last year by featuring four black women.

The four women also appeared together again on the show earlier this month.

Love, who is one of the comedians who will take part in the new Sky series Dating: No Filter, which will see famous faces provide commentary as they watch hopeful singles embark on first dates, said she  has been overwhelmed by the feedback she has received.

She told the PA news agency: “Being a part of history in representation with regards to having four black women, these amazing talented women, was such an emotional event.

“I was so emotional because the fact this was such a big thing in 2020 made me realise how it was so different and how much it hadn’t been done and then it made me think of many other women of colour who have been  in entertainment before me and they missed out on things because this wasn’t seen as something that viewers would watch, or it just wasn’t even thought about because of the demographics.

“I got a lot of tweets and messages of people sending me pictures of their little girls, saying: ‘Thank you, now my daughter or my son has someone to look at and think they can do that.’

“I don’t think people realise how much it affects someone’s dreams, or feeling like they are capable, when they don’t see someone that looks like them doing it and whether that is your ethnicity, whether that is your size, whether that is your cultural background, whether that is your disability, whether that is your sexuality, it really does make a difference in someone’s life.”

Love said she is also hopeful viewers will take something positive away from her new dating show, where people at home can potentially identify mistakes they might be making on dates.

She said: “I definitely think so, I felt like I learned myself.

“In people you can always see a bit of yourself, depending on what you’re watching or who you are watching, so it will hopefully make some people realise that this dating game is a lot different than they assume.

“Sometimes you see people and you think: ‘Ooh you’d be good for my friend,’ you want to hook somebody up and it doesn’t work out and you think: ‘Why not? What happened?’

“So when you see these dates you are like: ‘Right, that is what happened.’

“One thing I noticed is: ‘My gosh, some people do not have any chat.

“It’s a basic. (They ask) just: ‘How old are you? Where do you live?’ That’s it!

“There is no real depth in the question.

“It’s a lack of life experience, it’s possibly a lack of dating, it’s a lack of actually knowing what you want.

“If you knew what you want you would be going for specific questions so you would be looking at, like what do you value in relationships? What qualities are you looking for? But when you don’t know in yourself, you don’t even know to ask those questions.”

Dating No Filter, which will also feature comedians including Joel Dommett, Daisy May Cooper and Susan Wokoma, starts on February 25 on Sky One and NOW TV.