Whether I listen to the radio, watch TV or, more often, trawl the internet, I simply cannot avoid the endless spillage emerging from the corpse of This Morning. Just look at the last few days:
- “When reports of this relationship first surfaced, I asked Phil directly if this was true and was told it was not. It’s been very hurtful to now find out that this was a lie,” says Holly Willoughby, not adding, “IT’S ALL ABOUT ME!”
- “Now I no longer work on This Morning I am free to say this. I hope you have noticed that it’s the same handful of people against me or the show who seem to have the largest voice,” toots Phil Schofield.
- “We are happy to be here, this is a happy place to work, we’re happy people in a happy place,” gushes bad jumper wearing posh boy Gyles Brandreth.
And on it goes. Anyway, I’m not actually watching the show, just digging into some of the OTT media coverage which is surely out of step with how the rest of the country is feeling. You would be forgiven for thinking that every single person in the land watches Phil and Holly given that This Morning still leads the news. But they don’t. Far from it. In fact, only a tiny number watch the show.
On Christmas Day, ITV celebrated a ratings success when Holly and Phil (I am changing the order around for no obvious reason) battered the BBC into submission. With the BBC attracting barely 800,000 viewers for the usual Christmas Carols From Some Church Somewhere, followed by that eternal favourite Songs Of Praise, This Morning pulled in a massive…er…1.3 million viewers, meaning that only around 66 million of us found something else to do. But that was the peak Christmas Day audience. Recent figures aren’t anywhere near as ‘good’ as that.
In early May, the show attracted less than 750,000 viewers and as the Schofield ‘story’, if you can call it that, began to emerge, barely half a million tuned in. Far more people are watching the shit show unfold from a distance than are actually watching the show itself. And who can blame us? Just look at the items on today’s show hosted by Dermot O’Leary and Allison Hammond:
- A doctor talks about measles
- Gyles Brandreth, for it is he, reviews the news
- Brandreth talks about Percy Edwards, the animal impersonator
- Hammond talks about dressing up as a banana
- Someone is visiting a tea room in Cheshire
- Phil Vickery will be cooking a Philly cheesesteak and millionaire’s shortbread, which must be some achievement for the former England international tight-head prop
All rolling news outlets are going with this tosh and nonsense, as are some minor blogs like this one, but the point is they are not dwelling on any of the stories on the show. The story is the show and the story is far, far bigger than the show itself.
Clearly, some 66 million of us either don’t give a toss about This Morning, although some of us are looking on, semi-bewildered, from the sidelines.
You’d have thought Putin’s massive drone attack on Kyiv might just lead the news bulletins, or maybe the return to power in Turkey of right wing wrong ‘un Erdogan or even the terrifying wildfires burning their way across Canada. But no. It’s a real life soap opera featuring the real heroes of the 21st century, modestly talented TV presenters and their self-important, self-obsessed lifestyles, who are far less loved than they think they are.
Still, whatever happens it won’t affect my life, even on weekday mornings I am trying to escape the amateur hour broadcasting of Mary Ann Hobbs on BBC 6 music. Her voice irritates me like fingernails down a blackboard, but still not as much as Holly, Phil and This Morning.
