Holly tried her damnedest – but This Morning is anything but a functional family

What a masterful performance this was: smart and heartfelt, even if scripted. Revenge dress. Revenge hair

Taking odds on what Holly Willoughby was going to say – or not – about Phillip Schofield had become close to a national pastime, like waiting for Winston Churchill to update us on the war effort. But this particular Monday morning she took the bull by the horns and hung on to her rodeo crown.

As the strings of This Morning’s chirpy theme tune faded to “determinedly upbeat”, Willoughby, flanked by the cheerful Bristolian stand-in Josie Gibson, took a beat before getting down to brass tacks: the resignation of her former co-presenter from ITV after he admitted to lying about an affair with a younger male colleague.

“Right, deep breath,” she said, steely and stainless in a stiff and spotless white Reiss piece. “Firstly, are you okay? I hope so. It feels very strange indeed sitting here without Phil. And I imagine you might be feeling a lot like I have … shaken, troubled, let down, worried for the wellbeing of people on all sides of what’s been going on … and full of questions.”

What a masterful performance this was: smart and heartfelt, even if scripted. Revenge dress. Revenge hair. The textbook power plays with which to exorcise a disgraced work husband. Step into the living room, kids. Dad has been caught doing something unforgivable. We’re all to pull through together.

Holly Willoughby gets on with it. The show must go on, because she is paid a large amount of money to ensure it does. If her immaculate blouse had any sleeves, she’d have rolled them up.

But should it? “The only thing we can do now is be the family that we are,” said co-host Gibson, bringing Willoughby in for a bear hug. Family? If this is a functional family unit, I’m a banana.

Bright and talented professionals doing their on-air damnedest to honestly confront and correct the mess one man has made of his life and those around him … is that a story the public just loves to see?

An actual family – as we know from Schofield’s tell-all to the BBC’s Amol Rajan – is having a tremendously hard time during this national psychodrama. “You, me and all of us at This Morning gave our love and support to someone who was not telling the truth, who acted in a way that they themselves thought that they had to resign from ITV and step down from a career that they loved,” said Willoughby.

I don’t know. It gives me the ick. Something is rotten here and we all know what it is. The divorce papers have been signed but the dysfunctional This Morning family aren’t even moving house. Perhaps the local schools are just too good. But surely the memories will linger.

I’m sure there is something worthy to be said about women fixing the f***-ups of men who can’t keep it in their trousers. Maybe grinning and bearing it as John Torode steers us through the perfect way to barbecue king prawns, or while Dr Sara drops useful tips on how to diffuse the coming “pollen bomb”, is simply the modern British way.

Perhaps blended families up and down the country will have tuned in at 10am and said, yes, this is us. Holls wants us to bank on her and a new chapter. The question is: are we happy keeping it in the family, or not?