This Morning's Holly Willoughby has "fully complied and co-operated" with an independent inquiry into the affair scandal surrounding her ex-colleague Phillip Schofield.
Back towards the end of May, Phillip, 61, publicly confessed to engaging in an "unwise but not illegal" extramarital relationship with a much younger work colleague, who has remained anonymous, and the repercussions are still being felt around the ITV corridors today.
Jane Mulcahy KC was brought in to "carry out an external review to establish the facts" following some consistent vitriol from TV watchers, and now The Mirror reports that Holly has been assisting in any way that she can.
"Holly was more than happy to do what was asked of her, and explain her position, and what she knew, and what she didn't," revealed a source.
ITV managing director Kevin Lygo is another big name involved with the process, commenting at the Edinburgh TV Festival earlier this week: "[Jane] has been talking to everybody involved, they take your phone and look at every single text you've ever sent, email, WhatsApp.
"So, everything is available, lots of interviews, talking to everybody and I hope as soon as possible, but probably in September, she will make that public."
On the broadcaster's handling of duty of care, the 65 year old promised: "We do, trust me, take it incredibly seriously. We haven't got anything to hide and if we can adapt and change our process to make it better, then we should do it on a continuing basis."
OK! has reached out to Holly's representatives for comment.
In related news, branding expert Dermot McNamara exclusively explained to OK! why Phillip is still a long way off any kind of TV return.
"I don’t think he’ll be wanting to come back into TV at the moment. He can get jobs on his own, he doesn’t need Vanessa [Feltz] to get him a job at TalkTV. He’s still bigger than Vanessa. If he wants to look for work, he probably will find it, because the BBC interview went relatively well for him.
"Most broadcasters would be a bit worried because they won’t want to be seen rewarding bad behaviour. Regardless of it being 'unwise but not illegal', this has huge duty of care ramifications on the people concerned. If anyone does decide to give him a platform again, they’ll have to be careful," he added.
A separate PR expert, Mark Borkowski, concurred with this observation, while suggesting that a 12-month layoff would create sufficient space for the controversy to fade.
"The photos of Phillip out and about have such collateral because people are waiting for him to do something and there is no need for him to do anything," he said.
"If he’s sensible he’ll be out of commission for about a year and by then, people will have moved on and other celebrities would have found themselves being whacked. Then there is every opportunity to have a platform to recover. If he does anything now, it will bring back those negative headlines from May."
This Morning airs weekdays on ITV.
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