Isn’t it time that we gave Holly and Phil a break?

It’S been horribly hard watching the holly and Phil show on this Morning over the past few days. After claims and counter claims about the real reason for the breakdown of their long friendship, they’ve both put a brave face on it.

the first on- screen hug between them this week was certainly awkward, but then who doesn’t feel tentative trying to make up with an old friend even in private, let alone in front of millions of tV viewers?

At the same time, holly Willoughby is trying to juggle her demanding career with home life as a happily married mother of three young children. And Phillip Schofield, who moved out of the family home after he came out as gay in 2020, is balancing work with maintaining his relationship with wife Stephanie — with whom he is still close — as well as with their two daughters.

Yet the harsh truth is that whatever is going on behind the scenes, holly and Phil are required to appear for two and a half hours on live tV from Monday to thursday. And to do so amid a barrage of comments from hostile social media, with viewers scrutinising their every move.

It must be truly awful for both of them, not to mention their families.

It’s as if it’s a modern-day Roman circus where holly and Phil are gladiators performing for a pitiless, baying audience who’ll decide their fate, giving them the thumbs up or fatal thumbs down.

their vulnerability came home to me this week when I saw the picture of Phil arriving at the ItV studios in a crumpled t-shirt.

he seemed to be in despair and I thought for the first time that this circus had gone too far. Phil and holly are daytime tV presenters, not killers or kitten torturers. And I say this as someone who last week wrote them off, saying I thought we’d seen the end of the Phil and holly show.

I hope I got it wrong. Given the efforts both of them have made this week, I hope their friendship on and off screen will endure. not least because Phil will need all the friends he can get right now — yesterday his brother was sentenced to 12 years in prison after being found guilty of sexually abusing a teenage boy.

there are times when we armchair observers of celebrities’ lives should take stock, reflect. I’ve done that after watching them this week — and now I wonder if it isn’t time we gave holly and Phil a break?

Picture: GETTY DESPITE the battered economy, Rishi Sunak insists ‘things are moving in the right direction’ for hard hit families and cites cheaper beer and tampon prices. Small succour if you’re a post-menopausal woman like me who prefers a glass of Chablis.