ITV boss Dame Carolyn McCall says Caroline Flack's death left her "absolutely devastated".

Caroline Flack

Caroline Flack

Last month, the 'Love Island' host - who stepped down from her role after her arrest in December for allegedly assaulting her boyfriend Lewis Burton - took her own life aged 40 on February 15, and the network's chief described her passing as "unbelievably tragic".

Speaking at a conference in London this week, she said: "I think the thing about Caroline Flack is that ITV are absolutely devastated by what happened to her.

"So many people at ITV knew Caroline, including me, and it was unbelievably tragic. I think that we can never know what is behind suicide. It is not in any way simple. It is a very, very complex thing.

"We take advice from (mental health charities) Samaritans and Mind and we will continue to do that."

Carolyn also opened up about 'Love Island' and ITV's "duty of care" to everyone involved.

She added: "As far as duty of care is concerned, we are absolutely focused on making sure our duty of care is, for both our participants and for our talent, world class. We want to be best in class for that.

"I think because we reviewed 'Love Island' last summer, so a few months before last summer's series, Paul Litchfield, who is the former CMO, works with us, and he made a whole load of recommendations which we have implemented, which is about aftercare, which is about casting, which is about a whole range of things - financial management, social media management."

Carolyn explained the impact of social media has surged over the past few years as 'Love Island' has become more popular, and now bosses are responding to those changes.

She said: "It wasn't really a successful programme. It has only really made a big difference in the regionals three years ago on social media.

"We take that very serious and we are actually working with the industry on how we can share all of that and how we can learn and pool our resources, so we can learn from each other. So that is what we are doing."


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