Holly Willoughby “shaken, troubled, let down” by Phillip Schofield scandal

A tearful Holly Willoughby returned to This Morning today (Monday 5th June) with a monologue in which she said the scandal surrounding her former co-host had left her “shaken, troubled, and let down”.

Willoughby also said: “We have given our love and support to someone not telling the truth” and that she was “worried for the wellbeing of people on all sides of what’s been going on”.

Schofield resigned from ITV on Friday 26th May and was dropped by his agents YMU after admitting that he had an “unwise, but not illegal” affair with a young male runner who worked on This Morning.

Due to the fact the runner was his junior on the daytime show, Schofield’s behaviour has been widely condemned as an ‘abuse of power’. The runner was underage when Schofield first met him, and he later mentored him as he entered the television industry. Schofield denies accusations of grooming.

While the fallen presenter claims that he lied to keep the long-rumoured affair hidden, questions still remain around the extent of ITV’s knowledge of it and its handling of an investigation that took place in early 2020.

ITV has said it looked into rumours of the affair at that time and “did not find any evidence of a relationship beyond hearsay and rumour”.

Willoughby has also denied that she knew about the affair.

In a statement last week she said: “When reports of this relationship first surfaced, I asked Phil directly if this was true and was told it was not. It’s been very hurtful to now find out that this was a lie.”

ITV has instructed a barrister to ‘carry out an external review of the facts’.