Everything was going swimmingly on This Morning until the dairy-based side dish prompted presenter Dermot O’Leary to utter a curse word live on television.
The morning talk show has recently taken knocks like never before, and long-term host Holly Willoughby abruptly quit the show after 14 years.
The programme, however, has continued, and this week Dermot and Alison Hammond have stepped over as hosts amid a difficult few days.
And on Friday morning, Dermot was so taken with a cottage dish created by chef Donal Skehan that he seemed to lose track of time.
He began to dig in after being offered a platter of curds and whey delights, and it wasn’t long before he appeared to drop a foul-mouthed good comment.
‘My wife will lose her shizzle,’ he said, his mouth still partially full of food, and he left viewers at home wondering whether he’d just sworn on live TV.
‘Not Dermot swearing whilst gobbling cottage cheese,’ one viewer responded, with a second wondering, ‘Was that a “s**t” from Dermot?’
Dermot and Donal had both recently found that their spouses were Scandinavian – Dermot’s from Oslo, and Donal’s from Gothenburg.
‘I thought [Dermot] said “Lose her s**t”‘, another viewer commented, while yet another said: ‘Producers in Dermot’s ear shouting “You can’t say s**t on telly!”‘
Dermot met Dee Koppang in the early 2000s and married her in 2012. They share one kid, a three-year-old boy.
Despite the alarm, this isn’t the first time the word’shizzle’ has been heard on This Morning – in fact, it used to be rather often.
Holly and former host Phillip Schofield used to do a ‘Bag of Shizzle’ segment in which people won random unknown gifts.
A contestant won the £3,000 Spin to Win jackpot in November 2021 and then incorrectly referred to the Bag of Shizzle as ‘the bag of s**t’ – cue laughs.
Dermot’s cheese-inspired gaffe wasn’t the only contentious episode this week, as illusionist Uri Geller displayed a photo of a dead dog.
This Morning airs weekdays at 10am on ITV.
