The ITV host, 57, seemed to rub presenter Clare, 46, up the wrong way when she joined him and Ruth Langsford, 57, in the This Morning studio to talk about her latest children’s book, The Racehorse Who Disappeared.
Clare revealed that the new story is a heartwarming one with a girl power message, inspired by the real-life events of famous racehorse Shergar’s kidnapping back in 1983.
Eamonn, however, was interested to hear how she got into the right space to write for children, asking: “If you’re grumpy and in a bad mood and have to sit down and write, how do you then get the nice Clare, the Clare who is going to relate to nine-year-olds who are going to read this?”
“Why are you suggesting, Eamonn, that there’s any other kind of Clare?” she responded tersely, joking: “How dare you? Quite offended, quite offended now. Not talking anymore.
“My trouble is focusing,” she admitted. “And I think for all of us, focusing is the difficulty. So when I write, I write very quickly, it’s getting me to sit down and concentrate.”
“And can I hear your voice? If I’m reading this could I hear your voice?” the host enquired, before she assured him: “Oh yes, there’s jokes in there for you as well. Because I’m very conscious that parents read to their kids, so the odd line that they can either explain or not is quite funny.”
“I like to do effects,” Eamonn chipped in. “I like to make noises. But I used to change the story.”
Clare didn’t appear to be impressed with that idea, snapping: “No don’t change it Eamonn, I wrote it.”
Towards the end of the interview, he then tried to squeeze a spoiler out of the author, beginning: “The big question I’ve got to ask you is, obviously the horse disappears -“
“No, don’t ask me whether they find it or not because I’m not giving it away, Eamonn,” she stated. “I’m just saying it’s not as traumatic as Shergar, okay?”
“Right, right. Okay…” he mumbled.
This Morning airs weekdays at 12.30pm on ITV.
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