Matthew Wright has claimed a female fan threatened to take his and his wife Amelia’s newborn baby during a six-month stalking ordeal.
Michelle Ranicar, 54, from Hillingdon, Uxbridge, pleaded guilty to one count of stalking to cause serious alarm or distress at Wood Green Crown Court on Tuesday October 20.
TV presenter Wright, 55, and his partner recalled on ITV’s Lorraine how Ranicar had regularly appeared in the audience of his Channel 5 show The Wright Stuff.
'I didn't want to go out the house because she said she wanted to snatch the baby.'@Matthew_Wright and @mrsameliawright give a harrowing account of their six month stalking ordeal.
Watch the interview in full ➡️ https://t.co/vn8NeF0pBw pic.twitter.com/qrt67WM0Dx
— Lorraine (@lorraine) October 26, 2020
After being banned from the studio, Ranicar approached Amelia while she was pregnant and allegedly told her she was “more likely to have a stillbirth” due to her age.
After Wright departed The Wright Stuff in June 2018 after 18 years, with fellow presenter Jeremy Vine taking over the slot, Ranicar continued to follow the couple.
This culminated in a six-month period that Amelia said left her “emotionally scarred”.
Speaking on the daytime show, Amelia said: “We were both at an event Matthew was hosting, a charity event for a community centre, and this very done up and glamorous woman approached me and said, ‘I have to speak to Matthew, I don’t like the way our relationship ended’.
“Then she came out with, she said to me, I was heavily pregnant, ‘Women your age are more likely to have a stillbirth’. And I was just shocked to the core.”
The couple, who married in 2010, became parents to daughter Cassady in January 2019, after trying for a baby for eight years and enduring six failed IVF attempts.
Amelia said Ranicar had appeared at the couple’s home following the birth.
She said: “Just after Cassady had been born, she turned up on the doorstep. I was on my own the first time.
“She was trying to push her hand through the letterbox saying, ‘I want the baby, I want the baby. Give me the baby.’
“Can you imagine what that would do to a new mum?”
Matthew added: “Amelia wouldn’t go out of the house and when we did go out of the house together, she would be looking down every side street in every doorway expecting someone to leap out.
“As anyone who has been through this kind of experience will tell you, it just takes over your life.”
Amelia said she was still affected by Ranicar’s behaviour.
She said: “I didn’t want to go out of the house because she said she wanted to snatch the baby.
“You can imagine how you just live in fear and terror and you don’t want to go out. (It should have been) a joyous time, absolutely.
“The last time she came round Matthew was there but she got more hysterical and it got more serious.
“Where she said, ‘I want the baby, I want to take care of the baby. Give me the baby’.
“That’s when it got to a different level.”