Check out my bangers,’ says Holly Willoughby, holding up a string of uncooked sausages and falling into a fit of giggles at her swanky new kitchen island.
Unveiling her twice-a-week YouTube show, the former This Morning star gives free rein to the naughty, fun-loving side we only occasionally got to see on TV.
Another clip from her sparkly new project shows her being asked close-to-the-bone questions by comedian Katherine Ryan.
The notoriously risque Ryan starts a game of ‘S**g, Marry, Avoid’, giving as choices presenter Romesh Ranganathan, actor Rob Beckett and comedian Josh Widdecombe, which prompts the giddy admission from Willoughby that she would ‘s**g Romesh’.
And the 45-year-old is left further red-faced when her guest tells her: ‘I’m just sending Romesh the video of you saying you want to s**g him!’ (Ranganathan, Holly later told me, promised to send her a ‘right to reply’ response, though she remained tight-lipped about what exactly he said.) More laughs come as another comedian guest, Joanne McNally, dresses her in a series of tracksuits for a fashion skit.
Yes, Holly is back, but the shackles are off and she’s laughing again.
Two-and-a-half years after she sensationally quit This Morning after 14 years at its helm, she gave me a sneak peek yesterday of Holly Willoughby Together, the show she will launch next week.
Seven months after I revealed the project, which she has been working on in secret for almost a year, she showed me a montage of forthcoming episodes over avocado toast and Paloma cocktails at the Langham Hotel in central London, while her 15-year-old daughter Belle watched excitedly.
In fact, says Holly, Belle provided some inspiration, since she’s of a generation that no longer watches terrestrial TV but is glued to YouTube instead.
Willoughby left This Morning after she learned, to her great distress and fear, that former security guard Gavin Plumb had plotted to kidnap, rape and murder her.
Plumb was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 16 years, but the psychological damage to Holly was done.
Overnight, Britain’s best known TV host disappeared from our screens.
Now all that is behind her.
After a short clip of some of the new show’s highlights, she exclaimed: ‘I feel like I’ve just given birth!’ I ask if she’s worried about the reaction to her new project, after all that’s happened.
‘I know I’m not everyone’s cup of tea,’ she said.
‘I know that and that’s fine.
I don’t want to try to convince people if they don’t want to watch.
I don’t fear what people think.
I’ve had real fear, I know what that’s like.
Your perspective changes after something like that.’ The show will also, you sense, finally erase the trauma surrounding the end of her friendship with Philip Schofield, her former co-host, who left This Morning after lying about an affair with a much younger colleague.
Produced by her husband Dan Baldwin’s production company, Hungry Bear Media, and sponsored....
