Fern Britton has spoken about the end of her working relationship with Phillip Schofield when she decided to resign from This Morning in 2009
08:51, 15 Jul 2026Updated 08:51, 15 Jul 2026
Fern Britton has spoken about working with Phillip Schofield(Image: rune hellestad/Corbis via Getty Images)
Television presenter Fern Britton has spoken about the end of her working relationship with Phillip Schofield. Fern, 69, resigned from This Morning in 2009, which she had co-presented with Phillip. He left the show in May 2023 after admitting to having a relationship with a younger ITV employee.
Asked in a new interview why she left the show, Fern said: “I don’t really want to go into that. I probably won’t ever, but yes, it was a day that turned on a sixpence, and suddenly I thought, ‘I’ve got to get out of her’.”
Speaking about rumours of a rift with co-host Phillip, she said: “It was hard, it was very difficult, very upsetting.”
Despite this, Fern said she had a good friendship. She added to the Guardian: “I don’t backtrack on that, but then, you know, give it time, and it wasn’t right.”
Phillip Schofield and Fern Britton(Image: Gareth Cattermole/Getty Images)
Adding a bit of extra detail about her emotions around Phillip she said: “It was very mixed emotions for me, that one.
“I can’t really explain it, because we did have a very good working relationship, until we didn’t, so it was tricky. I wish him well. I hope it all settles down and he finds some happiness.”
As well as presenting This Morning, Fern has also appeared on Ready Steady Cook, Strictly Come Dancing, and BBC Breakfast.
She has also spoken about her exit from BBC Breakfast. She said she was “decimated” and told she was “terrible” in the middle of a day’s filming.
Fern presented Breakfast Time between 1983 and 1986 before departing and moving onto a different place of work.
Fern Britton(Image: ITV)
Speaking on James O’Brien’s Full Disclosure podcast she said one incident in particular had a great impact on her.
She said: “I left because I was very unhappy there. The editor hated me, Frank hated me. It was made very, very difficult for me.
“There was one morning when the editor walked in at 8 o’clock sort of halfway through the morning and he came through the forest of cameras and he said to me: ‘You are terrible, you are awful, now sit down there and do another hour’
“After the show, he called me into his office and locked it, he was in there with his deputy editor and they just shredded me and I cried and cried and cried.”
Fern later said that after the incident she was told to improve her appearance before leaving the office and forced to put on make-up before leaving the individual’s office.
She said: “It was a Friday and he said you’re not leaving this office until you put some make-up on. I said ‘It’s in the bag, on the desk’ and he went and he got my bag and I had to put my makeup on in front of him….What he did was really bad, it really decimated me.”