Holly Willoughby’s rise from kids’s presenter to TV’s golden woman
H
olly Willoughby has loved nationwide treasure standing throughout her 13 years presenting This Morning, rising from her roots in kids’s tv to queen of daytime TV.
The bubbly blonde presenter, 42, first entered the limelight when she was scouted by a modelling company as an adolescent earlier than breaking into tv within the noughties when she starred in CITV present S Club TV, a spin-off drama based mostly on the lives of pop group S Club 7.
She started internet hosting kids’s recreation present Xchange on the BBC and likewise starred within the kids’s model of expertise present Fame Academy, earlier than leaping ship in 2004 to current ITV’s Saturday morning kids’s present Ministry Of Mayhem alongside Stephen Mulhern.
Willoughby took over from Cat Deeley on kids’s music chart present CD:UK a yr later earlier than ITV bosses handed her a presenting slot on newly launched Dancing On Ice in 2006.
The transfer noticed her matched with Phillip Schofield for the primary time, with the pair’s on-screen heat chemistry offering a glimpse into what was to come back on This Morning.
Willoughby has since been on the centre of the This Morning furore following co-host Schofield’s bombshell exit after he admitted to an “unwise, but not illegal” affair with a youthful male colleague.
His departure from the present got here after weeks of hypothesis over a feud with Willoughby, who has stated she’s going to stay on the present however is taking early half-term vacation depart.
On Saturday, she posted on Instagram saying Schofield’s admission about his relationship with a youthful ITV colleague was “very hurtful”.
She stated: “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.”
Willoughby first shared the couch with Schofield in 2009, after the departure of Fern Britton, which noticed the pair’s friendship blossom incomes them Bafta and National Television Awards gongs.
In 2016, they famously appeared on air within the outfits they’d worn the earlier evening on the NTAs and shared tales with viewers from a raucous after-party hosted by Ant McPartlin and Dec Donnelly.
The presenters’ shut bond gave the impression to be cemented even additional in 2020 after Schofield got here out as homosexual in an emotional on-air chat with Willoughby.
He later thanked Willoughby and stated he “couldn’t have done that with anyone else… sitting by the side of me”.
Willoughby has had a lot of different TV roles, together with co-hosting I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out Of Here! in 2018, stepping in for McPartlin who took a break from ITV commitments and public appearances following a drink-driving conviction, which noticed him banned from the highway for 20 months and fined £86,000.
Willoughby has three kids, Belle, Harry and Chester, with husband Daniel Baldwin, who she married in 2007.