Rarely are ITV bosses so unanimous in their edicts. But for the past year or more they have been unequivocal on one matter alone: they need a new Holly Willoughby, and they need one now.
Ever since quitting This Morning in 2023, speculation has been rife as to what Holly will do next and I’ve been told rather than return to the ITV fold she is stepping out on her own, working on a project with husband Dan Baldwin’s production company.
Enter Olivia Attwood. All gloss and beaming smiles, she’s the relatable blonde who found fame on Love Island in 2017 and has since been a mainstay of large swathes of ITV2’s programming.
So there was every indication the path to Willoughby’s ITV crown would be a smooth one for the 34-year-old.
Although privately educated, Olivia had impressed senior executives at the channel with her ‘girl next door demeanour’. They were all set for her to become their new golden girl.
But in recent weeks doubts have been setting in among TV bigwigs.
Whispers that Olivia is perhaps not quite the nice girl they are trying to sell have grown ever louder – before reaching a cacophony this week with the news that she is to divorce her professional footballer husband Bradley Dack.
To put it mildly, this is a split that looks set to become toxic.
Rumours have been swirling for some time that Olivia’s ‘friendship’ with Towie heartthrob Pete Wicks has tipped over into something altogether less wholesome – and that her treatment of Bradley throughout their marriage has been less than considerate.
And she seems not to be well-liked by her Loose Women co-presenters, or ITV’s hard-working backroom staff.
One well-placed source at the channel tells me: ‘ITV bosses have spent a lot of time and effort in moulding her into something special.
‘But the problem is that many people don’t think she is very nice.’
Olivia Attwood is divorcing her professional footballer husband Bradley Dack, fuelling rumours that she is perhaps not quite the nice girl TV bigwigs are trying to sell
Ever since quitting This Morning in 2023, speculation has been rife as to what Holly Willoughby will do next. Enter Olivia Attwood
One could say that the clues have been there from the start: take the scene from her ITV reality show Olivia Marries Her Match, which followed the run-up to her wedding to Bradley, 32, in 2023.
Several times on the show, she goaded her husband-to-be about his height. He is 5ft 9in, while she is 5ft 9in and a half.
Talking to camera, Olivia says: ‘We’ve all got to make sacrifices. I thought I’d end up with a taller man… we adapt.’
Then in the third series, which covered their lavish wedding at the Bulgari Hotel in London’s Knightsbridge, she once again referred to the Gillingham player’s perceived shortcomings.
‘The biggest news is we’re finally getting married,’ says Olivia. ‘Yes, I’m walking down the aisle to my tall, dark and handsome – sorry, not tall – dark and handsome Bradley Dack.’
Comments like this might have been meant as a joke, but caused much anger among Bradley’s group of friends, I’m told. ‘It was unnecessary,’ says one.
‘It was nasty,’ agrees my ITV source. ‘Imagine if a man judged a woman like that – there would be outrage.’ She does, however, still have a devoted fanbase. Her mostly female 2.5 million Instagram followers lap up her posts which mix highly curated insights into her life with paid-for plugs.
Soul-baring details, such as a run-down of her surgical tweaks – breasts enlarged, then reduced; lip filler in and then dissolved – appeal to them.
‘Young women like her; they like her honesty about her cosmetic work,’ says my source.
This week, the news of her marital split was carefully briefed to a red-top newspaper.
In a meticulously planned PR move, Bradley was blamed for the breakdown of their two-year marriage, with friends of Olivia’s telling the newspaper he had crossed the line – how so was not detailed – and she could no longer trust him.
No reference was made to her friendship with Pete Wicks, who is also Olivia’s co-host on her Kiss FM radio show, and who last summer was pictured cosying up to her during a work trip to Ibiza. At the time, both insisted they were just good friends.
Olivia was spotted cosying up to Pete Wicks, her co-host on her Kiss FM radio show, during a work trip to Ibiza last summer
As well as her show with her now ex-husband, she has done other projects, including Olivia Attwood: The Price of Perfection and Olivia Attwood: Getting Filthy Rich.
Sources say she has earned ‘hundreds of thousands’ from ITV, which has funded her recent move into a smart bachelorette pad in South London.
‘There have been anxious meetings and desperate worries that this friendship [with Pete] could scupper ITV’s plans for Olivia,’ one source tells me.
And with good reason – I am told Olivia and Pete are ‘closer than close’. One source who knows both parties tells me they ‘wouldn’t be surprised’ if the pair were to come out as a couple in the coming months.
‘Those who work with Pete and Olivia say they describe one another as work husband and wife,’ they tell me.
The I’m A Celeb star first had a relationship with Bradley that ended before she took part in Love Island in 2017.
Then on the show, she met handsome model Chris Hughes.
So popular were they that – despite not winning – ITV rapidly gave them their own show, Chris & Olivia: Crackin’ On, which documented their life after leaving the villa. On-screen, though, Olivia looked to be the one who wore the trousers, while Chris appeared, at times, crushed by her demands.
Many viewers said Olivia’s seeming manipulation and nastiness towards Chris made the programme uncomfortable to watch.
Little surprise, then, that the show ended with their break-up.
Chris has moved on to date American singer and dancer JoJo Siwa who he met on ITV’s Celebrity Big Brother last year.
Chris, described relentlessly to me as ‘the nicest guy in showbiz’, is said to be ‘deliriously happy’ with JoJo. Olivia, though, is perceived to have made barbed comments about their relationship on her social media channels, even once suggesting that the attraction between the two was purely down to JoJo’s fame.
Friends of his became so angry at her ‘nasty’ behaviour that Chris’s team intervened several months ago, asking her to stop her commentary about his life. ‘They split more than seven years ago, but still she felt she had the right to give her opinion about him. It was so mean,’ one said.
I’m told her reputation has preceded her at Loose Women, which she joined in 2023 as a panellist. Those on the show are stunned she takes her own glam squad with her to get ready, rather than using the show’s in-house team – a move that has left her co-stars ‘bewildered’.
‘Isn’t Olivia the woman who is supposed to be down to earth and normal?’ snapped my Loose Women insider. ‘She thinks she’s way above the rest of the girls.’
Even her best friend and personal assistant Ryan Kay appears to have turned against her.
Inseparable, the pair had matching tattoos. Then, last summer, Ryan cut ties with her after she was pictured canoodling with Pete in Ibiza.
‘Olivia has been given so many opportunities by ITV to be their superstar,’ says my source.
‘The nightmare for them now is that Bradley gets his own back – and reveals that she’s not quite the golden girl ITV would like her to be.’