Holly’s secret struggle
One in 10 of us suffer from some form of dyslexia in the UK, now one of our most popular presenters has opened up...
Aperson’s world may seem enviably perfect from the outside – but you never know what secret demons they may be fighting.
And so it was for This Morning’s Holly Willoughby, who opened up about something she admitted had ‘shamed’ her throughout her youth – her dyslexia.
As she and co-host Phillip Schofield interviewed William Carter, 22 – who didn’t overcome his inability to read until 13 but is now doing a PhD at The University of California, Berkeley – Holly, 40, revealed her own battle.
‘I wouldn’t write down in front of people because I didn’t want them to see, but it doesn’t bother me now that I can’t spell,’ the star revealed, adding she had, though, found the condition ‘shameful’ growing up.
‘For me, because I’m not very good at spelling, for years I felt shameful about that.’
The light at the end of the tunnel came in her late teens, when she went to college.
‘I had to find my own tool kit and for me, it was finding somebody who understood this and who could teach me how to access those tools, because at school it wasn’t that well-known then.
‘At college, there was one lady in particular I met who gave me so much advice and, for me, that was my turning point.’
It’s brave of Holly to open up about something that clearly affected her deeply. Last year, the mum-of-three admitted, ‘At school, reading out loud terrified me because I’d get all the words wrong and I was convinced everybody thought I was stupid.’
Thankfully, Holly’s outlook has totally changed: ‘It still happens now – most of the mistakes I make on This Morning are because of it but it doesn’t do what it did to me back then because I don’t let it have power. I now know, it’s all about how you package it in your head.’
‘I was convinced everyone thought I was stupid’