‘This Morning’ carried out a paternity test for Jeremy McConnell today (08.02.17).
The brunchtime show have decided to act as a mediator between the Irish hunk and his ex-girlfriend Stephanie Davis by arranging a DNA test to find out once and for all whether he’s the father of the brunette beauty’s three-week-old son Caben-Albi.
Host Phillip Schofield said: "ITV use a very reputable company so we’ve acted as a mediator here. We don’t want to know the results, we don’t want anything to do with it other than the fact you can say you’ve had the DNA test. The nurse came in this morning, that will now be sent off to the lab and will be held there securely."
However, the 26-year-old heartthrob may still be kept in the dark as Stephanie – who wanted Jeremy to sign an "unreasonable" contract in order to have the test done – still has to agree to have her newborn swabbed by the nurse at ITV to get the results.
Jeremy said: "If he is my flesh and blood then I will step up to my responsibilities. I want to step up to the plate but I’m not being given that opportunity at the moment, my hands are tied. She banned me from the birth. There was no contact though. My responsibility as a father starts when the baby is born. I don’t owe anything to Steph. If she had asked me to be at the birth then I would have been there 100 per cent."
The former couple – who got together in the ‘Celebrity Big Brother’ house in January last year – have been in a very public war of words since they called time on their relationship at the end of April 2016 but he has admitted he decided to cut ties with the 23-year-old actress at the time because he didn’t want to put the then-unborn baby at risk.
He explained: "We broke up at the end of April and it was closer to the end of May that I found out she was pregnant. She called me and said she’d just done a blood test and found out she was pregnant. There was a lot of mixed emotions going through my head at that point but obviously when you break up with someone you have lingering feelings and you’re texting and you’re calling them and there was certain activity I wasn’t happy … The reason I didn’t get back with her and supported her through the pregnancy was because the relationship was so toxic and I just wasn’t putting myself, her and the baby at risk of anything."
The heavily-inked star has continuously denied cheating on Stephanie throughout their four-month relationship but he has now revealed he did sleep with a number of girls while they were arguing towards the end of their romance.
He said: "Yeah there was some girls. There were incidents where I felt like I did and I held my hands up to that. There was more than one time, which I don’t feel great for but there was reasons. We were on and off. The arguments were too much. I think Steph was faithful when we were together."
Despite the bitterness between him and Stephanie, Jeremy is still hoping he’s the father of Caben-Albi and is adamant he’s never "once said" he’s not the dad.
He said: "I’ve never said once that I’m not the father … I hope I am the dad."
But Jeremy hasn’t always been so certain as just last June – a month after Stephanie revealed her pregnancy – he refused to believe she was even expecting a little one.
He said at the time: "Look, if she is pregnant it’s not my kid.
"It was a known thing that we spoke about after we broke up, that she came on. She had her period. We had been broken up."