The Plot to Kidnap TV Presenter Holly Willoughby Comes a Year After a Wave of Hate and Disinformation
Today, news broke that a 36-year-old man had been arrested for plotting to kidnap and murder British TV presenter Holly Willoughby. He was charged with soliciting to commit murder and incitement to commit kidnap against the host of the programme This Morning. Why Holly Willoughby? Well, we don’t know yet. But I can tell you why a large swathe of British people hate her. When Queen Elizabeth II died, her body was placed in a coffin and the coffin was placed in Westminster Hall in London. It stayed there for four days. Mourning citizens would then queue in a line that went around the city for upwards of 24 hours to see the coffin and pay their respects to the late Queen. There was a live stream of the coffin that people followed online. One day, social media users spotted two people walking by the coffin who they suspected had not stood in the line: the presenters of the show This Morning, Holly Willoughby and Philip Schofield.
Willoughby and Schofield had been in Westminster Hall filming a segment for their programme and interviewing people both inside and outside the building about paying their respects. The UK Parliament gave them media accreditation “for the purpose of reporting on the event for the millions of people in the UK and globally who haven’t been able to visit Westminster in person”. They were spotted on the livestream wearing press lanyards and walking past members of the public in order to get to the press gallery. From that, a social media scandal was born.
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