Holly and Phil
Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby on the lessons learned in lockdown, their hopes for a return to normal and getting the giggles...
Much changed over the past year, but one of the few constants was ThisMorning. Phillip Schofield, 59, and Holly Willoughby, 40, have continued to greet viewers and keep us all smiling through the toughest of times. Following on from the next stage of lockdown easing, Phil, who separated from wife
Stephanie after coming out as gay in 2020, and Holly, who is married to TV producer Dan Baldwin, took a moment to reflect on the most challenging year in the show’s 33-year history – and the impact it’s had on them both…
Phil and Holly, how do you think this year has changed you?
Phil: It’s made me appreciate work and friendship. And also the small things in life – I can actually get in my car and drive to see my mum. Those simple things. I’m not even fussed about international holidays – I just want to sit in my garden with some mates.
Holly: I agree. I think it’s those small things, those little liberties you take for granted and never imagining that anybody would take them away from you. You know, that kind of panic and fear and, ‘God, what is this?’
What supported you most during this past year? Holly:
The viewers. We’ve been told we were like the nation’s comfort blanket, which is just amazing.
Phil: And the viewers were our comfort blanket too! You needed someone to be there if you were struggling.
Do you feel proud about what you and the This Morning team achieved during lockdown? Holly:
I don’t know how they’ve done it half the time, because in the beginning nobody knew what we were getting into. Things were changing so quickly and we had a whole office bustling with people. Then day by day it was getting emptier and emptier. Then it was just the two of us, and just a couple of people on
camera – we were all a little bit scared, actually.
Phil: It’s this sort of enormous shared experience. Certainly, the way we chose to be there for the viewers was that we wouldn’t be hysterical – we wanted to report in a sensible way, give it time, no knee-jerk reactions. We’re all still here, we’re all OK, everything’s alright, we’ll be fine. And of course, that’s not being trite over the fact that more than 128,000 people in the UK have lost their lives to Covid and all those families are utterly devastated. But if there was something said, we would look at it in an analytical way. We’ve been quite calm, there hasn’t been hysteria and we’ve also allowed ourselves to laugh, because that’s what you do when things like this happen.
Holly: I knew we were doing something important. I’ve got the kids at home, Dan wasn’t going into the office, so I was the only one going in and out of that house and I was worried. Having said all of that, I knew what we were doing was important enough for me to go, as we’re being safe at work. I know I’m going to come home, wash my hands, take my clothes off by the door and get in the shower, because what we were doing was necessary, so I wanted to keep doing it.
So what has made you laugh helplessly on the show? Holly:
Milking a horse! That’s probably up there with making me laugh and making me feel sick in equal measure.
Phil: We were talking to quite a prominent person over Zoom and their phone was by the side of the monitor. At an unfortunate moment, the phone vibrated and the person had also just shifted sideways, and it sounded like the most extraordinary fart you’ve ever heard in your life on the telly! We had our hands on the desk screaming with laughter. This was in the darkest of times
– we had to get ourselves together before they finished their answer.
What else have you been grateful for on the show? Phil:
We were so lucky to have had a bar and a Guinness on the show!
Holly: We’re also practically living in a restaurant every day – we get food cooked and plonked in front of us.
Phil: It’s when a Spin to Win winner says, ‘Oh my God, you’ve been amazing. I’ve entered since the start’, that kind of thing. You’ve got to be quite careful because I think we’re all on the edge – you could cry at the drop of a hat. It’s so hard sometimes and you think, ‘You have to centre yourself.’ We are all on the brink of tears all the time, so it doesn’t take much to push us.
What’s the one change you’ve made in lockdown that you want to keep? Holly:
Organising my time – now there’s no reason why you have to go across town for a meeting as you can do them on Zoom. I’m there when the kids get back from school and they’ve really enjoyed me being back in the afternoons a lot more, so I don’t want to give too much of that back now.
Phil: I’ve got very protective of local produce and shops. Whereas there’s no question that I would have been in big supermarkets, I now love getting on my bike and dropping into the butcher’s, the greengrocer’s and the fishmonger’s. You look at these people whose livelihood is mussels, but they’re throwing them back into the sea – they can’t sell them, as people aren’t buying them. What I’ll take from this is to be a little bit more artisan: less of the big world, more of the small one.
• This Morning airs weekdays from 10am on ITV and on ITV Hub.