Holly Willoughby is about to get the rebrand she deserves

Next month, Holly Willoughby might get the rebrand she needs (Picture: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)

Holly Willoughby has been the brightest star of British TV presenting for the last decade, and rightly so.

She is the embodiment of the perfect presenter, arguably more than people recognised before she started on This Morning alongside the now disgraced Phillip Schofield back in 2009

Holly had always been a safe pair of hands. She effortlessly made the transformation from children’s TV presenter and part-time lad’s mag favourite to primetime on Dancing on Ice where her partnership with Schofield was an instant winner.

From then, she became TV’s ‘golden girl’. 

We got to see her naughty side on Keith Lemon’s debaucherous Celebrity Juice (where she was a captain for 22 series) but also how she could hold her own in tough interviews (unless they were with then Prime Minister Boris Johnson) and was pitch perfect as the best friend a closeted gay man needed when Schofield came out on national television.

But two years ago, the gleam of Holly Willoughby began to fade – albeit due to circumstances out of her control.

Signs that her friendship with Schofield was waning became glaringly obvious on This Morning.

In his abysmal TV comeback on Channel 5’s Cast Away, Schofield claimed he was sacked from the show because his brother was jailed for child sex abuse and not because of his affair with a much younger ITV colleague.

For Holly though, navigating her ‘TV husband’ being at the centre of such a colossal scandal was always going to be her Everest.

The public lost trust in This Morning and, through no fault of her own, they’d also lost trust in her.

Holly Willoughby on Celebrity Bear Hunt (Picture: Tom Dymond/Netflix)

Then, just weeks later, police confirmed a security guard from Essex, Gavin Plumb, plotted to abduct, rape and kidnap Holly.

Naturally, she stepped down with immediate effect soon after and cut herself off from the public glare.

So with both her life and career in danger, 2023 was the year from hell for Holly.

Next month, she might get the rebrand she needs when she joins Bear Grylls and a flashy line-up of celebs including Boris Becker, Mel B and Strictly Come Dancing judge Shirley Ballas on Celebrity Bear Hunt.

It’s not a particularly ground-breaking or unexpected show for Holly but it is her first away from the comfort of ITV since the end of her partnership with Schofield.

Celebrity Bear Hunt is also on Netflix which instantly makes it infinitely cooler and fresher than anything she’s been part of since Celebrity Juice and will show Holly at her best – out of the confines of a studio and having fun.

The premise is a tried and tested format – celebs fending for themselves in the jungle.

Left stranded in Costa Rica, they will become ‘prey for one of the ‘world’s most fearsome predators’ – Bear Grylls.

‘As Bear puts them through their paces, those who fail to impress will face the dreaded “Bear Hunt” – a brutal game of cat and mouse where they’ll be hunted down by Bear himself and, if captured, face elimination from the show,’ Netflix teases.

Yes, Bear Grylls is a draw (hence the show’s quippy title) but the graft ultimately falls on Holly (Picture: Netflix)

It’s exactly the show Holly has needed.

Because despite being one of the most bankable and smartest talents on TV, Holly has rarely broken away from a male co-host.

While Claudia Winkleman has The Traitors, Davina McCall had Big Brother and Maya Jama now rules Love Island, a show Holly can claim as truly own has been too long in the making.

Yes, Bear Grylls is a draw (hence the show’s quippy title) but the graft ultimately falls on Holly. This is very much a Holly Willoughby-fronted reality TV show and, somehow, the first Holly Willoughby-fronted reality TV show.

This is very much a Holly Willoughby-fronted reality TV show (Picture: Tom Dymond/Netflix)

The only real hurdle standing in Celebrity Bear Hunt’s way now is Netflix, which notoriously axes its best content even if it brings in viewers. It’s been six years and I’m not even remotely close to the end of grieving The OA.

Reality series often take time to really become giants of the genre, and Holly can’t afford to have her first real breakthrough TV gig since This Morning ‘axed after one season’.

Should Celebrity Bear Hunt work though – and from the trailer and it’s lineup, it looks like it definitely has huge potential – this could be exactly the fresh start Holly needs to break away from her past and look ahead to a new future with a reality TV show that’s hers.

If anyone deserves a comeback ultimately it’s Holly, who has been tarnished with someone else’s brush and ultimately paid the price for having a toxic co-host for too long now.

Yet her dignified silence since Schofield used his next shot at redemption to make a sly dig will only make the success of her first major show since leaving him behind so much sweeter.

There couldn’t possibly be a classier response from Holly than just overcoming the break-up of a ‘TV husband’ by finding success on her own two feet.

Celebrity Bear Hunt launches February 5 on Netflix.

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