This Morning presenters Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield will get to keep their jobs – despite a petition calling for their axe, says the head of ITV.
ITV boss Dame Carolyn McCall has claimed that Phil and Holly have been “misrepresented”.
The pair have faced a wave of backlash from the public over the last two weeks.
A petition to have them axed from This Morning has been signed up by over 75,000 angry viewers.
Holly and Phil petition: ‘They’ve been misrepresented’
Speaking at the RTS London Convention on Tuesday (September 27), Dame Carolyn was asked whether she felt the pair had done wrong.
“Honestly, nothing. Honestly. They did have accreditation. Lots of people saying they didn’t. They were sent by This Morning to do a piece for September 20, which ran.
I think they’re highly relevant and still very topical, and I think the majority of their viewers love watching them.
“They were to interview people inside and outside. But they didn’t displace anyone in the queue. And they’ve been very misrepresented, actually.
“And that’s why we made a statement. Unusually, we made a statement to say all of those things. But it does show you how things spread and how misinformation just spreads. And it is really horrible for them.”
“I think they’re highly relevant and still very topical, and I think the majority of their viewers love watching them. But there is a very shrill kind of voice against and it will hurt them,” she continued.
Domino’s scolded by ITV
Dame Carolyn also revealed that she had reached out to pizza company Domino’s.
It made a joke about the queuing debacle on Twitter, and it ended up being shared thousands of times on the platform.
As a result, Carolyn decided to reach out and touch base with them personally to ask why they made the joke.
She said: “We just said to them: ‘What are you doing?’ because we work with Domino’s and they said: ‘We think it is really funny, don’t you?’
“They just thought that was funny. They didn’t think of the impact that would have on how people would pick it up and start meme-ing it.
“I think that’s what happens with these things. They did not do anything wrong. They were with loads of other broadcasters, many of whom you know, and they were with lots of press journalists.”
This Morning presenters Holly and Phil ‘not feeling great’
Despite the backlash against Holly and Phil, Carolyn confirmed their roles are safe at ITV.
She added that she had texted the two stars and that they were not “feeling great” about the incident and public reaction.
“It’s hard. You imagine yourself in the eye of the storm like this, where you’re trying to say you’ve done nothing wrong and all the noise around you is saying that you have.
“It’s difficult to handle,” she then added.
Read more: Holly Willoughby breaks social media silence following ‘queue-jumping’ scandal
This Morning airs on ITV, weekdays, from 10am.
So what do you think? Leave us a comment on our Facebook page @EntertainmentDailyFix and let us know.