Fern Britton talks about Phillip Schofield on Celebrity Big Brother

Fern Britton has been in the broadcast landscape since 1980. Her long lasting career has taken her to almost all big broadcasting houses including BBC between 1994 and 2000 as well as ITV between 1999 and 2010. She also worked for Channel 4 and, since 2021, Channel 5.

Her work at ITV led her to This Morning. From 1993 she was a guest host and in 1999 she became the show’s Friday host alongside John Leslie. Then, in 2002, the two became the main host of the show but Leslie was quickly replaced by Phillip Schofield.

In 2009, Fern Britton made a surprise exit from This Morning when she resigned. Since then she went back to the BBC as a host but she also made an appearance on Strictly Come Dancing. Britton has also worked on the stage and she is a published author.

Fern Britton on Celebrity Big Brother

Her newest TV stint is the long-awaited reboot of Celebrity Big Brother. The show started on 5 March 2024 and already Britton is making headlines. On 6 March, she mentioned her former colleague Phillip Schofield.

In a conversation with Kate Middleton’s uncle Gary Goldsmith she made it very clear that she doesn’t want to be stuck with Schofield. Indeed, before the show started, rumours were going around that the presenter would be joining the 2024 line-up. Responding to those rumours, she bluntly stated:

Oh, well. That didn’t happen yet. Maybe that will happen as a surprise? I might have to leave at that point!

A response that leaves very little room for interpretation and which, unfortunately, seems to confirm that Britton and Schofield didn’t end their collaboration on good terms. So what happened between the two?

The rumoured feud between Britton and Schofield

When she left This Morning in 2009 rumours about her exit were flying, especially about whether or not Schofield was to be blamed. Then in 2018, on Twitter (it was still called Twitter then) the two added wind to the rumour mill.

According to Cosmopolitan, though Britton left as main host in 2009, she continued as a guest star and then the two had a weird encounter. Cosmopolitan explains that while she was on the show, via a video link, Britton said that she hadn’t been invited to the BAFTAs. Schofield replied that she couldn’t make the show because, at the time, she was performing in Calendar Girls.

Britton answered:

I wasn't on Monday night, I would have come but I wasn't invited.

As awkward as this live exchange was, it didn’t end there. Schofield took to Twitter and posted:

Odd really, because she was invited and declined #memoryloss we'd have loved her to be there. A vital and much loved part of the show.

Britton replied to his tweet with one of her own, saying:

No. I had no invitation to decline.

It was later revealed by Britton’s agents that she had been invited but they hadn’t passed on the invitation as they ‘assumed’ she wasn’t available.

The feud was revived in 2020 when Britton shut down the rumours that her exit from This Morning was about the lack of equal pay with her co-host. She explained:

Something happened and I thought, 'That’s it really' and I walked away and resigned. I was treated pretty poorly, actually. And after a while I just thought, 'Sod it'.

Schofield also addressed Britton’s exit in his own biography released in 2020. He wrote that her exit was due to an argument they had about the content of the show. Finally, prior to Celebrity Big Brother, The Sun spoke to an anonymous source who disclosed that the two former colleagues ‘don’t speak anymore’.

Read more:

⋙ Alison Hammond looks back on Big Brother and reveals why she desperately needed that gig

⋙ Dan Wootton launches new ‘independent platform’ called Outspoken

⋙ Phillip Schofield signed a non-disclosure agreement with his ex-lover almost a year later

Sources:

Mirror: Fern Britton threatens to quit ITV Celebrity Big Brother if Phillip Schofield enters the house

Cosmopolitan: Celebrity Big Brother: What happened between Fern Britton and Phillip Schofield?