Former BBC Breakfast presenter Louise Minchin has spoken out about the split between This Morning hosts Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby.
Louise, who at 52 took the momentous decision to leave the cosy BBC Breakfast sofa, spoke about the fallout between the ITV pair as she discussed her relationship with her former co-host Dan Walker.
In her new book she describes of successfully challenging her BBC bosses about her co-presenter always being the one to say the show’s first ‘hello’ and do the day’s biggest interview — so from then on, it was even-stevens.
‘I don’t like being confrontational but it was really important to me,’ she says.
However, she stresses — unlike the recently disastrous dynamic between Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield on ITV’s This Morning, she and Dan always remained friends.
‘You really have to trust your co-presenter. If that trust is gone it’s difficult to build it back,’ Louise says. ‘I don’t know if it has [gone with Holly and Phillip], but I do know the camera doesn’t lie. On television, body language is very powerful — even just a twitch of an eyebrow. Viewers can see what’s going on and as soon as you, as a presenter, are conscious of it, it gets worse.
‘Dan and I always had each other’s back and it was so important to know that.’