I am still trying to come to terms with the devastating news that Holly Willoughby has left ITV’s ‘This Morning’. According to the BBC’s entertainment reporter, Steven McIntosh, “most of the British public catch a glimpse of (This Morning) every now and again” which is interesting given that the average daily ratings hover around 700,000. The UK’s population is 67 million, meaning that 66.3 million of us don’t watch the show, a figure that makes for a strange minority, but there you have it. Television will never be the same again.
To be fair, I have, in the past, caught a glimpse of ‘This Morning’ when visiting people while working for a dysfunctional brain injury charity, sometimes in care homes. I would have thought the care home community, if there is such a thing, would be an ideal place for the show to thrive given the availability of such a captive audience. Quite why anyone else would be interested, I’ll never know.
The truth be known, I know little about Ms Willoughby. I know she shared the sofa on ‘This Morning’ with Gordon the Gopher’s puppet Phillip Schofield until Gordon had an affair with a ‘younger colleague’ – I am a little hazy with the details – whereupon one of them was sacked. Or something. Now Willoughby has left the show and we are in the midst of a national period of mourning. At least that’s how it looks to me.
To me, this feels like part of the incestuous world of the modern media whereby we are all told by media outlets how obsessed we are with the lives and times of that most modern version of a superstar; the TV presenter. The late singer-songwriter David Crosby once said of the ‘rapper’ Kanye West, entirely fairly in my view: “He can’t write, sing, or play at all. He is an egomaniac, he is dumb as a post, he creates nothing, helps no one.” In America, the complete lack of meaningful talent enables you to be a superstar musician. In Britain, the obvious career path is to be a TV presenter.
Of course, the likes of Willoughby must have at least a modest degree of talent in order to present TV shows – I know I’d be quite incapable of reading an autocue for two hours or more – but I would have thought the genre of presenters was well represented in the media so I’m sure there will be another cab off the rank of presenters to replace her soon.
I shouldn’t, I suppose, be too hard on Willoughby given that police have recently thwarted an alleged attempt to kidnap her, but the presenter as superstar – and Ant and Dec, I’m, talking about you two, too – is totally mystifying to me.
Hopefully, my tears of despair will dry when I learn about her replacement on the show, much loved by everyone in the country, except the 66 million odd of us who wouldn’t watch it if we were paid. My guess it will be Nick Owen and Anne Diamond, but I am not an expert. But then, name me a TV presenter who is an expert on anything?
