You have to hand it to Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield. No matter who their guest is, they always do their best to make them seem like the most fascinating person on the planet.
But sometimes even the This Morning duo’s charms can only go so far, as viewers noted today during a painfully long opening segment.
The show opened with Holly and Phil high above London, up Big Ben – although as Phil explained, Big Ben is actually the name of the bell, which is housed in Elizabeth Tower.
The reason for the unusual opener was that Big Ben has been recently refurbished, and is due to start its famous bongs again this weekend for Remembrance Sunday.
After a quick explanation of what they were doing, Holly and Phil then ran up 300 stairs (in an incredibly quick time) to see the bell itself.
They were joined by a pair of clock experts, who did their best to make their job sound interesting – to mixed results.
And of the two, the bloke whose job it is to make sure Big Ben bongs on time was just too dreary for some viewers to handle.
One wrote: “I bet he’s fun at parties,” while another said: “Well he seems like a fun guy.”
Read more: I’m A Celebrity reportedly dealt bad news ahead of new series
Unfortunately his thrilling tales of how Big Ben used to bong in an E natural, but now bongs in E flat, didn’t go down well either.
With a reader writing: “Did they really just spend the start of the show talking about a clock?? Like seriously?? How boring.”
And one more unhappy viewer let fly with: “That engineer has a dynamic voice!” accompanied by several snoozing emojis.
Luckily for fed-up fans, it wasn’t long until Holly and Phil made it back into the studio.
Read more: Strictly’s Shirley Ballas breaks silence on sending Aston home
Although they seemed to have made the journey inside an ad break, which many viewers found suspicious, accusing the pair of pre-recording their intro.
Can’t win ’em all, Holly and Phil – and for what it’s worth we found your Big Ben facts fascinating!