Richard Bacon had to stop Alexa telling his children about his past drugs shame.

The 44-year-old TV presenter revealed his kids, Arthur, eight, and Ivy, six, who he has with wife Rebecca McFarlane, innocently asked the virtual assistant about their dad and he was horrified when it started to inform them about him getting fired from the BBC's 'Blue Peter' in 1998 for taking cocaine.

Richard told The Sun newspaper's Bizarre column: ''I am sitting in a room in my house in Los Angeles and there is one of those Amazon Alexas next to me and my kids said, 'Oh Alexa, who is Richard Bacon?'

''And it comes up straight away, 'Richard Bacon is an English television presenter. He was fired from Blue Peter in 1998 for taking...'. I jumped in and said, 'Alexa stop. Stop'.

''They said, 'What are you saying stop for? Why did you get fired?'. And then they asked again. And so it is right there at the surface even though it was 21 years ago.''

In 2016, Richard became the presenter of The National Geographic Channel's reboot of its documentary/panel discussion TV series, 'Explorer' and last year, he sold his original game show 'The Hustler' to ABC.

Richard is an executive producer on the show and revealed he is always honest with TV bosses about his past drugs shame.

He explained: ''In America they find it funny I suppose. It comes up as soon as you Google it. It's about getting their first, isn't it?

''Anyone who has a very big dominant scandal in their life it will always be there in some form so it's partly about you own it by making a joke about it. A good way to own it is to use humour.''