After two turbulent years with Eamonn Holmes at GMTV, Anthea Turner walked away from the show on Christmas Eve 1996 – she still believes his envy of her National Lottery show was the problem
A popular television presenter who worked with Eamonn Holmes says there was almost instant friction when she joined him on an iconic daytime TV show.
Eamonn has been one of the most recognisable stars on British television for decades and has worked with a long line of famous faces, including his ex-wife, Ruth Langsford.
But he hasn’t jelled with every colleague he has ever worked with. According to Anthea Turner, Eamonn took exception to her background when she joined him on the GMTV sofa in 1994.
“Eamonn is a trained journalist and I’m not,” she told The Times. “That caused tension from the start… The other thing was I didn’t have my ass on that sofa for very long before I was asked to present the National Lottery too, and I think that also annoyed him.”
Anthea’s first lottery show appearance attracted a huge TV audience of around 22million. Eamonn reportedly lobbied GMTV bosses to get her sacked, accusing her of being “too ambitious” and giving her the disparaging nickname ‘Princess Tippy Toes.’
She told The Sun: “I was always asked if I was ambitious and, if I said yes, I was made out to be a ruthless person who would walk over anybody to get where I wanted. It would be said that I was hormonal, or I was stamping my feet.’
She added: “And yet ask that question to a man, and if he’s ambitious, we think: ‘What a guy’. You’d never hear anyone say that about Eamonn or Phillip Schofield. No, they’re just doing their job.”
Anthea walked away from the “toxic” situation at GMTV on Christmas Eve 1996. Over a decade later, the former Blue Peter presenter said she was still “hurt” by the way she was perceived.
Speaking on the Miranda Holder Weekly Fashion Podcast, she said: “I haven’t weighed myself down with anything from the past, or any of that negativity.
“Nobody likes injustice, nobody wants to be misrepresented. It hurts, it really hurts.”
In a televised reunion in 2018, Anthea said that she had mixed feelings about Eamonn, saying: “There is a fine line between hate and love isn’t there? We were chatting in the break, Eamonn and I are a bit lazy and it’s easier to stay friends.”
Her remarks sparked a somewhat tense atmosphere in the This Morning studio, with Eamonn’s then-wife Ruth Langsford visibly taking exception to Anthea calling him her “ex.”
Ruth stressed that she and Eamonn were “properly married,” before Anthea interrupted her, saying: “Ah but we were telly husband and wife.”
While Anthea and Eamonn were said to have put an end to their bitter feud with her This Morning appearance, she later said that any talk of a friendship was exaggerated, telling the Express:”I don’t think Eamonn and I speak lots. “Those are just headlines saying that we reunited.”
She added: “Obviously, there was the hullabaloo. In fact, I went to Belfast where he was doing a show, and I remember going up there, it must have been about 15 years ago, and we signed a Good Friday Agreement.”
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