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Holly and Phil trolled after This Morning prank backfires

Viewers were not happy at their attempt at humour

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This Morning hosts Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield have been victims of online trolls after their Great British Bake Off joke spectacularly backfired.

The ITV daytime show thought they would get on the Bake Off bandwagon but their prank just left everyone with soggy bottoms.

Tweeting before the show, This Morning teased that they would be announcing who will replace Mel and Sue, when the baking show moves to Channel 4 from the BBC.

With the nation tuning in to see the big reveal, the excitement soon turned to anger.

The ‘official announcement’ was nothing more than a big hoax as a photoshopped pic of Holly and Phil’s heads on Mel and Sue’s bodies was shown on screen.

This was accompanied by the confirmation that they would not be replacing the innuendo spouting duo.

Phillip then announced: “We can officially announce today that it’s not going to be us.

“We’re not going anywhere. I can’t bake for my life.”

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In actual fact, Holly and Phil concluded that they had no idea who would be taking over from Mel Giedroyc and Sue Perkins.

Cue social media meltdown!

Viewers took to Twitter in their droves to slam the usually squeaky clean TV presenters for their ‘joke’.

Later in the episode, their co-star Rylan Clark-Neal made them aware of the Twitter stunt and the furore, to which Phillip said: “We had no idea that our interactive team had done that!”

Holly added, horrified: “We didn’t even know! We’re so sorry!”

The damage had been done though.

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The ‘joke’ had come about after Mel and Sue announced that they would not be following GBBO to Channel 4.

They have hosted all seven series so far and revealed that they were calling it quits in a joint statement.

It read: “We were very shocked and saddened to learn yesterday evening that Bake Off will be moving from its home.

“We made no secret of our desire for the show to remain where it was.

“The BBC nurtured the show from its infancy and helped give it its distinctive warmth and charm, growing it from an audience of two million to nearly 15 million at its peak.”


Nancy Brown
Associate Editor