Total and utter indifference on behalf of the ITV share price today, despite the UN formally designating This Morning a failed state. As you might be dimly aware, the daytime show is in disarray to the point of anarchy, unable to control its populace and beset by previously spurned warlords making significant territorial gains across the border from GB News. So the share price stability is the best news ITV has had all week. After all, any company where the behaviour of one half of one sofa is remotely market-moving would surely be moments away from going tits-up.
But it says so much about this great nation of ours that there are botched UK military interventions we’ve now heard less about than This Morning. Barack Obama famously judged what David Cameron allowed Libya to become as “a shitshow”. But had Obama, I wonder, ever watched Eamonn Holmes deliver a landmark drive-by in which he explained how Thursday nights were “playtime” for Phillip Schofield and his young lover? I think it could have put things into perspective.
Either way, another recap is now in order, as the This Morning implosion remains swiftly developing. Schofield was resigned from ITV on Friday, having admitted he lied over his “unwise, but not illegal” relationship with a much younger junior colleague. Inevitably, this move has done very little to staunch the story’s thrice-daily controlled discharge of sewage into the discourse. Still, I’m sure if ITV just issues one more statement clarifying its most recent statements, all of it will melt away and This Morning can get back to doing what it does best: making all the other breakfast-TV and daytime-TV snakepits look mildly less snake-filled in comparison.
By Monday, Schofield unwisely seemed to be beginning some kind of fightback, writing on his Insta that the show had been the happiest of families, contrary to what people with “persistently loud voices” said. That jibe was too much for Eamonn Holmes – now a GB News presenter, of course, but formerly an ITV stalwart of shows including This Morning. Pausing only to accept posies from well-wishers, a cardiganed Eamonn last night swept into the GB News evening schedules to brand Schofield “chief narcissist”. Which means a lot in this saga, given it contains more narcissists than the serial-killer wing of HMP Wakefield. “He created an atmosphere where people hated him,” purred Eamonn of Schofield’s tenure on This Morning. “People would avoid him in the corridor, he didn’t look at anybody, he didn’t know anybody’s names. Holly doesn’t know people’s names either. This is legendary within the production team, how distant they are, and how they just don’t care.”
Lambasting ITV for what he alleges was a cover-up over Schofield’s relationship with the young man, Eamonn explained: “All I’m here to do is to speak for people who hadn’t got a voice … I’m speaking on behalf of them.” Mm. Not all heroes wear sour grapes. The suggestion that Eamonn is bitter enough to say anything to get back on to terrestrial TV could not be further from the truth.
As always with this story, further alleged grownups are available. Last night viewers were also treated to media analysis from former How Clean Is Your House? presenter Kim Woodburn. A builder once recommended me a particular brand of sink unblocker with the words “that’ll even dissolve a rag if there’s one down there” – and there was something of this quality to Kim’s thoughts on Phillip’s erstwhile co-presenter Holly Willoughby. When it was mentioned that Holly reportedly wished to return to presenting duties as scheduled next Monday, but on her own, Kim replied: “I bet she does, that little bitch – I bet she does.” Go on, Lady Reith. “She aided and abetted him to take a big salary – get shot of that little bitch. Wimpy, wimpy little woman – she will not be missed.”
Yup, there really are some absolutely lovely people getting involved with this one. Speaking of which, we’ve heard plenty about it from Nadine Dorries, who (among much else) thinks This Morning’s editor, Martin Frizell, has questions to answer about how the young man’s appointment happened and was managed. No doubt. Yet I can’t help feeling Nadine’s moral outrage is somewhat selective. I never remember hearing her tell the world that Boris Johnson had questions to answer when he decided to actually promote someone he knew very well had issues with non-consensual sexual misconduct to the position of deputy chief whip. According to Nadine, ITV executives “don’t have the authority to ride roughshod over public opinion or to set their own standards of behaviour or rules” – a practice she didn’t seem to find quite so distasteful when it was indulged in week-in, week-out by Johnson, from whom she’s reportedly soon to accept a peerage.
If only unwittingly, then, Nadine has led us to a serious point about quite why the This Morning scandal is getting quite so much airplay. People apparently find it easy to obsess about “unwise, but not illegal” things that happened on daytime telly, but hard to maintain interest in the fact that at last count, almost 60 members of parliament were facing claims of sexual misconduct, including three who were cabinet ministers at the time. Many of those complaints were made by much younger people, few of whom would be saying it was consensual. Yet our nation’s seat of government remains a black box on this front, and we don’t know what happened to most of those investigations. Plenty of the alleged victims remain currently in limbo, and without faith that anything will ever be done. No offence to the This Morning studio, but surely parliament is a slightly more important hotbed of misconduct? Or do we, like ITV, always prefer to look the wrong way?
Marina Hyde is a Guardian columnist
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