As Holly and Phil fall out… 5 daytime TV duos who went to war including star who coined cruel nickname for co-host
IT’S the TV fall-out everyone is talking about.
Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield’s relationship has descended into a drama more suited to reality TV than breakfast – leaving viewers gripped.
Sources say the pair, once so close that they took family holidays together, no longer speak to each other off-screen.
Relations between the two are first said to have soured over Queuegate, and more recently friends say Holly was “deeply upset” after being left in the dark about Phil’s brother Timothy Schofield’s sexual abuse case.
When The Sun reported the alleged fallout, Holly was reportedly blindsided when Phil released a statement admitting “the last few weeks haven’t been easy for either of us”.
As hostilities deepen it’s unclear what will happen to ITV’s star pairing, but Phil and Holly are not the first breakfast TV couple whose relationship took a nosedive…
We take a look at other early morning presenters who had a very public fallout.
Anthea Turner and Eamonn Holmes
Eamonn, 61, dubbed Anthea ‘Princess Tippy Toes’ after they co-hosted GMTV together.
The duo had a famously frosty relationship and it’s said he gave bosses an ultimatum – sack Anthea or he would leave.
Anthea, 62, quit the show after two years in 1996 and was replaced by Fiona Phillips.
She later said she still feels sensitive over the fallout, claiming she was “made out to be a ruthless person”.
She told The Sun: “I thought it was sad. I just wanted to do the job I enjoyed, but unfortunately the roles have to be labelled.
“I was always asked if I was ambitious and, if I said yes, I was made out to be a ruthless person who would walk over anybody to get where I wanted. It would be said that I was hormonal, or I was stamping my feet.
“And yet ask that question to a man, and if he’s ambitious, we think, ‘What a guy’. You’d never hear anyone say that about Eamonn or Phillip Schofield. No, they’re just doing their job.”
The pair have since made up after Eamonn reached out to Anthea in 2005, and appeared together on Daybreak. Anthea joked: “If we can do it maybe Sir Alex Ferguson and Rafa Benitez will become friends, too.”
Frank Bough and Selina Scott
Selina said late TV star Frank Bough was a ‘nightmare’ to work with, claiming he was a misogynist who made “smutty remarks” about his manhood to her.
The duo launched the BBC’s first early morning show, Breakfast Time, in 1983 but she claims the relationship was sour from the start.
She labelled Bough a “sex-obsessed” nightmare just days after his death in 2020, aged 87, saying he was “not the friendly uncle figure that he liked to project to the public”.
Selina left the show three years after it began, and Bough left a year later.
In 1988, Bough was exposed for snorting cocaine and wearing ladies’ lingerie at a sex party involving prostitutes.
He was sacked from his £200,000-a-year contract with the BBC, but Bough would later return to presenting on outlets including Sky and London’s LBC.
Selina, now 72, said: “Many times, while we were winding down after the show, Frank would make smutty remarks to me about how well-endowed he was.
“I wasn’t overly shocked, but for a man more than 18 years older to be making such boasts was more than simply off-colour.”
She refused to attend the show’s 40th anniversary.
Denise Van Outen and Johnny Vaughan
Their onscreen chemistry made Channel 4’s Big Breakfast the must-see morning show of the 90s.
Denise and Johnny giggled and flirted their way through the iconic show, which also featured the late Paula Yates’ bed interviews.
But the pair fell out when Denise, 48, discovered Johnny was negotiating separate pay from her.
After two years she quit the show in January 1999 to pursue an acting career in ITV sitcom Babes In The Wood.
Model Kelly Brook was brought in for a few months to replace her but it proved a disaster after she struggled over big words like ‘intrepid’ and ‘satirical’.
Liza Tarbuck was then drafted in but viewers missed the connection between Denise and Johnny, 56, and ratings plummeted.
Denise returned in 2020 to join her old pal for the Big Breakfast’s final four months.
She later told Loose Women: “At that time we were like brother and sister. We were best friends, unbreakable.
“The whole relationship fell apart when we started to renegotiate our contracts because I always felt we worked together as a team and that’s how it should be. We created it together.
“Not just us but the rest of the team working on the show. I always had that mentality that it was about all of us. But Johnny and I know there are other influences involved, and agents and everything – but he was negotiating separately from me.
“I found out and obviously confronted him and I realised then that our friendship had gone in two different directions and for me it was tarnished.”
Denise said she ‘loved’ Johnny so was keen to give the show another go but that “a similar thing happened again”.
She added: “It’s hard because I loved him so much and I still do.”
Two years ago she told The Sun that their relationship was back on track.
Amanda Holden and Philip Schofield
Britain’s Got Talent judge Amanda and Phil co-hosted This Morning for around a year in 2014, while Holly was on maternity leave.
She was said to be keen for a regular presenting slot back in 2018, and was set to replace Holly while she was filming I’m A Celeb that year.
Amanda, 52, is said to believe Phil got her axed at the last minute – meaning the role went instead to former girlband star Rochelle Humes, 34.
A former TV exec told The Sun at the time: “Phillip actively campaigned for Rochelle Humes to get the job despite Amanda being more experienced — and having been told privately she’d got the gig.
“She feels Phil unfairly used his powers of persuasion. She was told he’d chosen Rochelle because she was easier to ‘manage’ on air – and understandably that incensed her.”
Phil branded the allegation “untrue” on Twitter, and an ITV spokesperson also disputed the claim.
Adrian Chiles and Christine Lampard
Before Good Morning Britain there was Daybreak, hosted by Adrian Chiles and Christine Lampard – nee Bleakley.
However, a year after the show launched in 2010 its ratings plummeted to 300,000 – compared to BBC Breakfast’s 1.5million – and the presenting duo were axed.
A member of the team told the Daily Mail at the time: “The atmosphere is just vile. A lot of us were here in the GMTV days, and it’s far worse than that.”
Having enjoyed a good on-screen chemistry when they co-presented The One Show, relations between Christine and Adrian reportedly soured as the “dynamic changed”.
A source told the Daily Mail: “The chemistry between Adrian and Christine isn’t there on screen because it isn’t there off-screen either. At the moment they are barely talking to each other.”
TV insiders claimed viewers fell out of love with the couple once Christine, now 44, revealed she was in a relationship with future husband Frank Lampard.
But Adrian later said of the row speculation: “Imagine seeing your best friend every day at 4am. There is so much potential for enmity, it’s a miracle we’re still firm friends.
“She’d get the hump with me. I’d get the hump with her. But we could always have a laugh.”
He claimed his only ‘beef’ was with ITV bosses who he said were “bonkers” to get rid of Christine.