Ruth Langsford offered to “save” Holly Willoughby after Dermot O’Leary and Gino D’Acampo began to imitate one another leading the show to momentarily descend into chaos.
As Willoughby attempted to chat to the 63-year-old, all hell broke loose as O’Leary pretended to be the Italian TV chef in the kitchen, while he tried to link to Loose Women.
Willoughby, 42, exclaimed: “Ruth save me! They’ve taken over!”
“Holly have they been drinking?” Langsford, 63, responded. “Do you need us to come and rescue you?”
As D’Acampo chimed in by telling Ruth he was going to come and give her a kiss, the Wylde Moon founder shouted: “Lock the doors Loose Women!”
Willoughby’s playful plea for help comes as Langsford’s husband Eamonn Holmes has been hitting out at the ITV morning stalwart and its stars in the wake of Phillip Schofield’s abrupt departure.
Schofield stepped down from the series after more than 20 years before quitting all his ITV projects after revealing he had an affair with a much younger colleague.
Since then, Holmes has launched several furious tirades about both Schofield and Holly, calling him a “liar” and claiming she has a “big mouth”.
Elsewhere on Tuesday’s instalment, the show hosts were left cringing as D’Acampo asked if there was “any news” he should know about in light of Schofield’s departure.
The TV chef returned to the ITV mid-morning show on Tuesday after a month-long trip Italy.
During a preview of his cooking segment, D’Acampo announced: “Everything is under control. I’m back. I was in Italy for a month. I came back two days ago.
“Any news from the last month that I should know of? Anything I should know?”
Willoughby replied: “No. No news.”
The studio fell notably quiet and O’Leary looked on awkwardly before he began chewing his pen.
Picking up on the energy of the studio changing, the celebrity chef asked loudly: “Why is nobody talking anymore, what’s happened?”
Appearing to make a reference to a comment This Morning boss Martin Frizell made amid the Schofield fallout, D’Acampo joked he had to change his recipe because “apparently I can’t do anything with aubergine”.
When asked if it was true This Morning was “toxic”, Frizell said: “Do you know what’s toxic, I’ve always found toxic, is aubergine.”
Before turning to the journalist and asking: “Do you like aubergine? Do you?”
After he last quip, O’Leary joked that it was D’Acampo’s first day back, but potentially his last: “’We need to rephrase, Gino is back for a one-time only.”
