When Bindi was just 11 years old comedian Fiona O'Loughlin called her "a bit creepy" and a "freak show". Photo / Getty Images
When Bindi was just 11 years old comedian Fiona O'Loughlin called her "a bit creepy" and a "freak show". Photo / Getty Images
This Australian comedian copped a fierce backlash when she slammed the Irwin family on TV. Now she's gone for the jugular once more.
Australian comedian Fiona O'Loughlin has reignited her one-sided feud with the Irwin family, almost a decade after she courted controversy by slamming them on a TV panel show.
O'Loughlin, 56, made the latest comments on an episode of podcast The Little Dum Dum Club this week, as she reflected upon the outrage over her 2010 appearance on ABC program Spicks and Specks.
During that controversial episode she called then-11-year-old Bindi Irwin "a bit creepy" and a "freak show," declaring that the youngster needed a slap in the face.
Viewers at the time said O'Loughlin was "tasteless", "un-Australian" and a bully.
It seems time hasn't dulled her disdain for Bindi and her family.
"I said (Bindi) was a freak. Let's call a spade a spade. Steve Irwin had Asperger's. You don't run around the world talking like that without being bonkers. Fun, but bonkers. What's the American wife? Terri. Terri actually thinks she's in a cartoon, because the outfits are crazy," she said.
Viewers at the time said O'Loughlin was "tasteless", "un-Australian" and a bully. Photo / Getty Images
O'Loughlin detailed one close encounter she says she'd had with the Irwins in the wake of Steve's death, when both she and the Irwin family were booked to entertain at the same corporate event.
"What they do at these dinners, they dress them up, Bindi and Bob … It's a corporate event, and we know how boring they are, but what are they like for kids when there's a full screen of their dead father playing on repeat? It's just so weird," she said.
O'Loughlin also said she had read My Steve, the book Terri Irwin released in the wake of her husband's 2006 death.
"I read the book which Terri wrote within a year of him dying. They were in Tasmania the night Steve died. They flew back to the zoo (Australia Zoo, the Irwin-owned Queensland tourist attraction), because that's normal, living in a zoo.
It seems time hasn't dulled O'Loughlin's disdain for Bindi and her family. Photo / Getty Images
"Terri said in the book that the kids were really freaked out because, you know when somebody dies and people come to your door with casseroles or well wishes? She said in the book how freaked out the kids were because they'd never had company before. They'd never had anyone over to their house," she continued
O'Loughlin also said she was unprepared for the backlash over her initial Spicks and Specks outburst about the Irwins, as she was under the impression her comments would be edited out of the broadcast.
"It's a prerecorded show, and I was employed as a comedian. The producers would say 'Speak up, speak often, don't worry, we edit it.' I fly back to Alice Springs and I'm in the bath one morning.
"My daughter knocks on the door and she's like, 'Mum, did you say something bad about Bindi Irwin?' I'm lying in the bath and I said, 'I might have? Yeah, I think I did. Why?' And she said, 'Because Kochie's talking about it.'"
Elsewhere in the candid podcast, 2018 I'm A Celebrity Get Me Out Of Here winner O'Loughlin claims she's been 'black-listed" by Australian TV executives.
O'Loughlin explained that she thought she'd be an attractive prospect for TV executives after 65 per cent of viewers voted for her to win the Channel 10 reality show over runners-up Danny Green and Shannon Noll.
"If you win a reality TV show, surely that tells them … don't the networks want what the people want?" she said. "I do think it's rude to the audience and I don't think Australian networks listen to the f***ing audience," she said.
