Over the past 21 years Phillip Schofield has been one of the faces of ITV’s flagship morning programme This Morning.
Prior to joining the show back in 2002, Phillip, 62, had hosted programmes including Going Live!, The Movie Game, Talking Telephone Numbers and Tenball, before taking over from John Leslie.
In the years since he’s worked alongside several other presenters, however, is embroiled in a ‘fall out’ with co-host Holly Willoughby, 41.
Once firm friends, the duo are now reported to be ‘barely speaking’ behind-the-scenes and that their friendship has ‘cooled.’
While Phil has insisted the pair are ‘the best of friends’ and called Holly his ‘rock’, she is yet to quash the rumours.
However, this isn’t the first time Phillip has had a public fall out with other figures in the media industry, several of whom have included former colleagues on the ITV show.
Fern Britton
Presenting the programme alongside Phillip for eight years, Fern Britton left abruptly in 2009 and it was later revealed there had been some tension brewing between the two for some time.
In his biography, Life is What You Make It, Phillip claimed their fallout had stemmed from an argument over the content of a This Morning episode.
He wrote that ‘for whatever reason’, that was ‘the point’ where Fern, 65, decided she didn’t want to work on the show any longer.
Around the same time, Fern revealed that she left after being ‘treated pretty poorly’.
‘Something happened and I thought, “That’s it really”, and I walked away and resigned,’ she recalled.
‘And after a while I just thought, “Sod it”,’ she told the Ray D’Arcy Show in 2020.
While Phillip said he tried to ‘make things right’ and that he missed Fern ‘deeply’, they later had a somewhat sour social media interaction after she claimed to not have been invited when the show received a Bafta for 30 years on screen.
He replied on Twitter: ‘Odd really, because she was invited and declined #memoryloss we’d have loved her to be there. A vital and much-loved part of the show.’
This week Fern also seemed to weigh in on the drama between Holly and Phillip, sharing on Twitter that she’d had a ‘catch up’ with ‘old pal’ Eamonn Holmes, who had his own public feud with Phillip.
Eamonn Holmes
From 2006 until 2021, Eamonn Holmes co-hosted This Morning with his wife Ruth Langsford on Fridays.
In the past he’s been pretty vocal about his issues with Phillip after his partner allegedly made a complaint about his behaviour to ITV.
The 63-year-old told the Daily Mail’s Weekend magazine: ‘Phillip is renowned for snubbing people. He’s very passive-aggressive. It’s up to Ruth to say how she felt, but I was feeling hurt for her. No one would have snubbed me like that.’
He added: ‘I have a good Belfast street fighter in me… I would be direct. I don’t go for presenters who think they have a special privilege or aura or influence.’
His comments came after Phillip cut Ruth off when she was completing a review of her show Loose Women during an episode of This Morning.
Although it was claimed she had been cut off due to running short of time, Ruth said she ‘had about three more words to say’.
He didn’t hold back this week either after news of Holly and Phillip’s fallout was reported, with Eamonn taking aim.
Speaking on his GB News programme on Monday, he said there should be a ‘special award’ for the pair for ‘best actors’.
‘He’s brought in lawyers, she’s brought in [a] PR team. The public surely have sussed that there’s no chemistry, that there’s a broken fit between the two of them,’ he said.
The presenter added that he believed This Morning ‘does not depend on who presents it’.
‘It’s an institution. It will carry on no matter who presents it, and anybody can check the viewing figures. There’s no difference between whether they present it or anyone else,’ he said.
Ruth Langsford
Ruth Langsford has hinted about an ongoing feud with Phillip in the past, which seemed to begin after the above-mentioned on-air exchange in December 2019.
At the time she reportedly filed an official complaint against him.
The next year Phil was seen awkwardly wrapping his arm around Ruth after This Morning won Live Magazine Show at the NTAs.
A show source told The Sun the whole thing was ‘staged’ following the pair’s on-going feud.
While he wrapped his arm around her waist and thanked her and husband Eamonn Holmes for their work on the Friday show, she bristled in the moment.
However, unlike her husband, Ruth has never spoken publicly about her apparent tension with Phillip.
Amanda Holden
In 2018, Amanda Holden, 52, was keen to co-host This Morning while Holly travelled to Australia to front I’m A Celebrity…Get Me Out of Here!
However, it was Rochelle Humes who ended up stepping into the role.
It was reported that although Amanda had been a frontrunner, she lost out on the gig because Phillip did not want her for the role.
On an episode of her Heart Breakfast show in 2019, Amanda joked about the things she never wanted to find in her home, listing: ‘Spiders, flies and Phillip Schofield.’
She added that while she had extended an invite to him to catch up for a coffee, he didn’t reply to her text.
Speaking about hosting with Amanda in 2014, Phillip told Heat magazine: ‘She has a faulty edit button and she forgets she’s on the telly, which is enormously endearing and funny, but occasionally quite scary.’
When news of Ruth’s complaint was released, Amanda said that she ‘admired anyone who sticks up for themselves as it’s not an easy thing to do’.
She added: ‘There is a tin opener and a can somewhere, and other people have found the opener.’
Holly Willoughby
Last week reports started emerging that all was not well between the current co-hosts of This Morning and were ‘not as close as they once were’.
A source told The Sun that ‘behind the scenes, their relationship has cooled’.
The comments come after it was claimed Holly and the This Morning team would ‘always be there’ for Phil, following his brother being found guilty in a sexual abuse trial.
Timothy Schofield was found guilty of sexually abusing a teenage boy over a period of three years, having been charged with 11 sexual offences involving a child between October 2016 and October 2019 – including two of sexual activity with a child.
Following the guilty verdict, Phil issued a statement and said he ‘no longer’ had a brother.
Metro.co.uk has contacted representatives for Phillip Schofield for comment.
This Morning airs weekdays at 10am on ITV.
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