Holly Willoughby’s return to This Morning following the departure of Phillip Schofield was trailed beforehand with a totally disproportionate sense of occasion.
She’s been drinking margaritas on holiday in Portugal. But you’d be forgiven for thinking she had been away fighting on the frontline.
In a prominent position on its main homepage, BBC news was running a live blog to count down to Holly’s heroic and “much anticipated’’ return.
I am well aware that the fact I’m choosing to write about this only feeds into the hugely overblown coverage of Holly Willoughby’s thoughts and feelings on the whole Phillip Schofield scandal.
But on Monday I tuned in to watch This Morning for the first time since my last major hangover, and the rampant insincerity on display was enough to bring on another headache.
Things started off weird and somehow managed to plunge into complete disassociation from reality the longer it went on.
“Deep breath’’ she began.
“Firstly, are you okay? I hope so.’’
Aside from the cost of living crisis, the ineptitude of the politicians ruling over us and the fact that Succession is finished forever, we’re alright to be honest, Holly.
So much for Holly Willoughby’s words on Phillip Schofield, what about ITV’s actions?
She went on to say she imagined we feel a lot like she does: worried for the wellbeing of “people on all sides of what’s been going on”.
Which is an odd way to describe the abuse of power of a much older man entering into an extramarital sexual relationship with a young staffer he has ‘mentored’ since he was a teenager, but ok.
After a deep, dramatic breath she asserted that “what unites us all’’ is a ‘’desire to heal, for the health and well-being of everyone.’’
ITV are trying really hard to make their ‘them’ problem an ‘us’ problem, aren’t they?
But we’re not all in this together. And this pandemic-esque language is not appropriate, no matter how advantageous the This Morning PR teams think it is.
We don’t need Miss Universe-style pronouncements about world peace. ITV just need to come clean about the very specific, sanctioned and shameful workplace practices that led to this scandal in the first place.
Holly Willoughby isn’t responsible for the dubiously described “unwise, but not illegal’’ actions of her former co-host.
She also isn’t in charge of HR, disciplinary procedures or safeguarding of young people working on the show.
But ITV, This Morning, and its stars do now have a responsibility to show that they take what has happened seriously. And that they know what needs to change to ensure it never happens again.
ITV This Morning is insulting viewers’ intelligence
The carefully crafted display of shock and disappointment that we’ve seen from the channel – of which Holly Willoughby’s on-air statement is just one part – doesn’t exactly inspire confidence.
Talking about bringing back the “warmth and magic’’ of the show and “finding strength in each other’’ is meaningless, cynical, garbage.
But it isn’t a surprise either.
I don't want to be myself on the internet but I can't help thinking that if you've been shaken by this, you probably need to get a life https://t.co/uKZxZv7LjZ
— Rebecca Reid (@RebeccaCNReid) June 5, 2023
We now know that the “investigation’’ that ITV supposedly launched into rumours of the relationship between Schofield and the young man was a sham.
It was a tick-box exercise, and it certainly wasn’t designed to uncover the truth.
What we’ve seen from ITV’s handling of this situation is PR spin, not transparency.
Without any willingness to be frank about its failings, all the channel is left with are vague platitudes that insult the intelligence of its viewers.
At the end of Holly Willoughby’s statement, co-host Josie Gibson remarked that “all we can do now is be the family that we are”.
But real families look out for one another. And it’s clear that the self-interested This Morning ‘family’ is still deeply dysfunctional.
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