Eamonn Holmes furiously scolds Holly Willoughby’s ‘false’ friendship in clash over Schofield scandal: ‘She protected herself!’

GB News host Eamonn Holmes has fiercely shut down defences of former This Morning host Holly Willoughby and claimed her friendship with former cohost Phillip Schofield was “false”.

The 62-year-old presenter is facing fresh scandal as new reports claim he sent Willoughby a scathing text after his ITV career ended, telling her “you brought me down”.

According to The Mirror, Schofield sent a WhatsApp message just one day before the news of his This Morning departure was confirmed to the public.

Schofield left ITV’s hit daytime show after it emerged that he had lied about an “unwise but not illegal” affair with a younger male colleague.

Reacting to the latest revelations surrounding the Schofield-Willoughby feud, GB News host and former This Morning anchor Eamonn Holmes took aim at Willoughby, claiming she was “protecting herself” and her career amid the fallout.

Hitting back at cohost Isabel Webster’s claim that Willoughby “lost her career” over the scandal, Eamonn fumed: “She’s never been stronger!”

Isabel then interjected: “Well, she’s not on This Morning anymore”, to which Eamonn rebutted: “She’s on Netflix and she’s on other stations. This Morning is a daytime TV programme, she doesn’t need This Morning.”

Weighing in on the argument, showbiz reporter Stephanie Takyi also came to the defence of Willoughby, claiming that she was previously “the golden girl of ITV” before the allegations came to light.

Takyi explained: “Because Phillip Schofield’s career became tainted, he was taking Holly with her. So she had to protect what was left of her career.

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“I think for Phillip Schofield, they were very much in it together and he saw a different side of Holly.”

Eamonn disagreed, raging: “It was very much a false relationship really. Look at the way it ended.

“If this was your friend, you would come out and you would say, look, something bad has happened here and I don’t agree with it, but she said nothing, absolutely nothing. She was protecting herself throughout this.”

Reaffirming her defence, Takyi then claimed that there are “many different sides to the story”, adding: “There was the illicit affair he had with the younger male colleague, which she says she wasn’t aware of. There was the allegation against his brother, apparently ITV said they weren’t aware of the extent of the trial to that.

“So there’s two scandalous things here. How do you deal with that when your career is also on the line? There has to be a separation.”

Hitting out at the broadcaster, Eamonn then fiercely claimed: “ITV are obviously lying about a lot of situations, and there’s executives who don’t seem to appear.

“This faceless person, Emma Gormley, she controls daytime TV. She fires the bullets for ITV and Kevin Lygo. But you don’t hear anything from those two top bosses.”

In criticism of Schofield, Takyi then concluded: “What I don’t like about this is Phillip Schofield was very happy to play ball when he was still in This Morning.

“But now he’s come out, he’s labelled them as the ‘three s***s’ of showbiz. So why is he exposing them now? It’s only now that his career has gone down the drain, he wants to name and shame.”