Neil Dudgeon, who plays Holly Willoughby in Midsomer Murders, has explained why Holly Willoughby’s cameo has taken two years to appear.
The This Morning host, 42, was set to make a special appearance on the programme in 2021 after being a long-time admirer.
Holly’s admirers were just as enthusiastic as she was about the cameo at the time, but we’re still waiting two years later.
Neil has finally stated why.
Neil, who is marking his 50th episode on the programme, told Kate Garraway and Richard Madeley on Wednesday’s Good Morning Britain: ‘She’s a friend of the show, I think, she was a tremendous fan of the show.’
‘She was amazing, she was absolutely professional,’ he continued of Holly.
‘I think she was a bit nervous when she first arrived.’
‘She plays a character called Holly Willoughby, I wouldn’t like to say it’s herself.’
Richard then asked him: ‘We were actually asking about it earlier, you were saying it was actually hard to remember her because you’re in such a long production line, you filmed it two years ago.’
Neil replied: ‘Yeah we filmed it two years ago, we’ve shot another two series since then.’
He went on: ‘There’s kind of a backlog in this country of broadcast, I don’t know why, you’d have to ask ITV.’
Holly has stated that she messed up her cameo despite only having two lines.
She told her then-co-host Phillip Schofield that she was ‘so embarrassed’ after recording the sequence in 2021.
‘Thank you for having me when I came down, it was one of the best days of my life, it was like Disney world for me,’ she enthused.
‘I have to say we were all very impressed by how you just stepped up,’ said Neil, who was a guest on This Morning at the time.
‘We’d do a line run and rehearse the scene a bit. We as actors go, “Oh Dorothy, what’s her name? Dorothy? What’s my line?” and all that, and of course Holly just stepped up.’
Chuckling, Holly stressed: ‘That is not necessarily quite true. I forgot my line!’
‘You’re being very kind, I was so embarrassed to open my mouth and act because you know I’m not confident with that sort of thing,’ she added.
‘So to anyone who would listen I said my two lines repeatedly at them over and over.’
Insisting she was modestly playing her role down, Neil insisted: ‘It’s more than two lines!’
‘But that’s what you’ve got to do,’ he explained. ‘You’ve got to rehearse just to get better at anything.’
Jumping in with the question we’re all gagging to get an answer for, Phil – who quit This Morning in recent weeks after admitting his ‘unwise but not illegal affair’ – squealed: ‘But are you killed? Do you get out of there alive?’
Holly, on the other hand, was clearly bound to concealment.All we can do is wait and see!
Midsomer Murders is available to watch on ITV Hub, while Good Morning Britain airs from 6am on ITV1 and This Morning from 10am.
