This Morning presenters Rochelle Humes and Craig Doyle have said Holly Willoughby will “forever be one of us” as they hosted the first show since the TV star announced her departure.
Willoughby announced she was leaving the ITV flagship daytime show on Tuesday afternoon.
The news of her departure comes after a 36-year-old man was remanded in custody last week charged over an alleged plot to kidnap and murder the presenter.
It also follows a turbulent period at the show, after Willoughby’s former co-host Phillip Schofield left in May after he admitted to a relationship with a younger male colleague.
Opening Wednesday’s episode of This Morning, Humes said: “Of course, we want to start by sending our love best wishes and respect to our Holly.”
She continued: “Holly loved her job here and was really looking forward to the future of the show. But recent events, especially in the past week, have been hard to deal with and she’s quite rightly putting her family first.”
Doyle added: “On behalf of everyone here, in front and behind the camera, we just loved working with Holly and she made coming into work so much fun, we are all really, really sad and we’re really going to miss her.”
Willoughby, 42, announced she was leaving the show in a social media post in which she said said it was an “honour to just be part of its story”, but that she feels “I have to make this decision for me and my family”.
Humes said: “Holly said she’s incredibly proud of what she’s achieved on this show, and so are we. She will forever be one of us.”
Doyle added: “But as Holly Willoughby knows only too well, the show must go on.”
Former This Morning presenter Richard Madeley has said Willoughby has done “a very brave, wise and courageous thing” by stepping down from the show” and has done “exactly the right thing”.
Madeley, who launched This Morning with wife Judy Finnigan in 1988 and presented it for 13 years, told Good Morning Britain: “I think, and Judy agrees with me… Holly has done a very brave and wise and courageous thing.
“We know that Holly genuinely puts family first, she puts her family first and her career second. And that really is the order.
“People watching don’t know that, they just see Holly the professional, but she does put it first.
“I think given the year that she’s had, all the things that she’s had to put up with, and then this terrible thing that happened last week, given that she’s done the show for 14 years, which is a year longer than Judy and I did it when we left, I think it’s given her a chance to kind of step back and take stock and she’s put her family first.
“She’s going to focus on them for a while. She’ll come back, not to This Morning, but she’ll come back to do something else.
“But I think she’s done exactly the right thing for her own mental health department.”
Willoughby pulled out of hosting This Morning on Thursday last week and her London home was reportedly being guarded by police after a man was arrested on Wednesday on suspicion of conspiracy to kidnap.
On Friday, shopping centre security officer Gavin Plumb was charged with soliciting a man named David Nelson to commit murder, and incitement to commit kidnap between October 2 and 5 in Harlow, Essex.
Plumb is alleged to have conspired online with another man and created a “detailed plan” to carry out the offences.
