PLATELL'S PEOPLE: Isn't it time 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.
AMANDA PLATELL: It's been horribly hard watching the Holly and Phil show on This Morning over the past few days
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?
Anne is toe die for!
Anne Hathaway appeared at the Bulgari jewellery launch looking sensationally old-style Hollywood in a gold sheath dress, draped in the firm's gems, with necklaces costing up to £38,000. Everything about her was perfect — and her open-toe sandals minus tights were a timely reminder to all of us it's the time of year to make an appointment with the pedicurist.
Anne Hathaway appeared at the Bulgari jewellery launch looking sensationally old-style Hollywood in a gold sheath dress
Ant and sweat...
Ant and Dec are quitting Saturday Night Takeaway saying that, after 20 series, it's 'the perfect time to pause for a while and catch our breath', while continuing to do ITV's I'm A Celebrity, Britain's Got Talent and Limitless Win.
Good luck lads with your breather, but perhaps it would be more honest to admit that losing a third of your 7.3 million Takeaway viewers in two years has left both you and ITV breathless with frustration.
Ricky proves the joke's on woke
Good news in the fight back against wokery: the Hollywood Bowl gig on May 6 by our brilliantly irreverent and less than PC Ricky Gervais took £1.41 million to become the highest grossing single concert by a British stand-up comedian, ever.
Ricky says he wishes his mum was still alive so she could have seen it, adding that she'd have been horrified by the language but secretly proud.
As we all are Ricky.
The Hollywood Bowl gig on May 6 by our brilliantly irreverent and less than PC Ricky Gervais took £1.41 million (file image)
Horticulturalist Alan Titchmarsh is right — this new fad for rewilding where you let the weeds and dandelions grow everywhere is not gardening. As a passionate gardener, on my modest plot, give me delphiniums and scented roses any day. And there's only one thing to do with weeds — yank them out!
After receiving a fellowship at the Ivor Novello awards, Sting said he knew his band Police had made it when he heard their first single Roxanne on the radio in 1978. An odd hit, given it was about a prostitute and yet, curiously, it has remained an anthem about unrequited love for decades.
After receiving a fellowship at the Ivor Novello awards, Sting said he knew his band Police had made it when he heard their first single Roxanne on the radio in 1978
Republicans call the £162 million cost of the Queen's funeral a waste of taxpayers' money. Given that it enticed millions of tourists here, I'd say that at a cost to Brits of under £2.50 per head, it's brilliant value for money.
Adidas proudly used what appeared to be a male model with a bulge in the crotch to launch a £50 woman's swimsuit in its Pride 2023 collection, outraging many on social media who accused it of eradicating women. Yet we females born without a penis have a choice. We can accuse the firm of cancelling women — or cancel Adidas.
I've taken pleasure ditching three pairs of the brand's trainers in the local charity bin which, so far, have remained uncollected.
Heroes run in Rigby family
Jack Rigby was two when his dad Fusilier Lee was murdered by Islamist extremists. He wore a shirt at his funeral saying: 'My Daddy, my hero.' Ten years on, Jack's doing a marathon to raise money for a charity helping bereaved military children. Bet Lee's looking down saying: 'My son, my hero.'
Jack Rigby wore a shirt at his father's funeral which read on the back: 'My Daddy, my hero.'
After Man City striker Erling Haaland was snapped in Calvin Klein Y-fronts, sales of white undies rocketed by 45 per cent. The sad truth is that without his 6 ft 4in, 14 st body of pure muscle, most blokes in baggy Y- fronts look like their grandpas.
Expert doctors say we must not call people 'fat' but say they suffer from Chronic Appetite Dysregulation. Also, we're told obesity should be classified as a disease. I have sympathy for people struggling with their weight but you can't cure Stage Three cancer by cutting out the burgers and exercising more, can you?
Westminster wars
What nonsense from Keir Starmer wanting to give the vote to 16-year-olds.
One in ten of this snowflake generation don't even know if they're a boy or a girl — how can they be expected to tell the difference between Labour and the Tories?
As Suella Braverman pushes her new illegal immigration legislation, the PM says he 'won't rest until he stops the small boats'.
Given he's only got one barge to house 500 of the estimated 700,000 illegals in the UK, he'll have time for a rest having betraying his promise . . . when the Tories are kicked out.
As Suella Braverman pushes her new illegal immigration legislation, the PM says he 'won't rest until he stops the small boats'
Did Borat expose real Rudy?
Former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani is hit with a $10million lawsuit by ex employee Noelle Dunphy, 43, who claims he made her perform sex acts on him while he phoned people including Donald Trump.
She also says she often had to work naked. If true, Borat didn't know the half of it when he caught Rudy with his pants (nearly) down in that hotel bedroom.
Harry's account of a 'near catastrophic' New York car chase by the paparazzi, leaving him and Meghan traumatised, is questioned by almost anyone who saw it. Still, I refuse to accept the theory he sought to use it to garner support in America by evoking the death of his mother Diana. Surely, despite his attacks on the Royal Family, not even Harry could sink that low?
Of the 2.5 million people off work due to long-term sickness, many say that working from home has given them a bad back or a sore neck. Well, slouching on the sofa all day munching pizzas and doing the odd spot of DIY or gardening can do some terrible things to a person's back.
