Cat Deeley’s chances of taking over as presenter of This Morning have been crushed when she signed up for a US show.
Phillip Schofield, 61, left ITV’s breakfast show earlier this year after confessing to lying about a ‘unwise but not criminal’ romance with a considerably younger colleague.
Holly Willoughby, 42, left the show a few months later, claiming it was a ‘difficult goodbye’ but that she wanted to prioritise her family.
There have been other guest presenters since then, including Rylan Clark, Steve Jones, Sarah Ferguson, and, most recently, Cat, 47.
Cat stepped in to assist host alongside Rylan and Craig Doyle for three days, and fans couldn’t get enough of her, with many urging her to join the lineup full-time.
Any hopes of her doing so have now been crushed as it was confirmed she will instead return to Hollywood to continue hosting So You Think You Can Dance.
Cat, who has hosted the dancing competition series since 2006, is presently back in the United States filming the show, which will return to television in March.
Many viewers petitioned ITV managers to keep her on the host of This Morning, with some supporters describing her as “warm, funny, intelligent, and empathetic.”
She also stepped in to fill in on Lorraine, another of ITV’s mainstay morning shows, in 2020.
While a source previously told The Sun that This Morning executives hoped she could ‘steady the ship’, this week Cat insisted the current assignment was a ‘one-off’.
‘It was so much fun, but it was truly just a one-off,’ she said of her This Morning hosting debut to Closer.
‘I’m going to LA for six days soon and then I’ll have loads of promo for my new show in January, so we’ll have to see if anything more comes of it.
‘It was great fun, but we don’t know what’s going to happen.’
Last month Richard Madeley, who launched and fronted the show for 21 years alongside wife Judy Finnigan, said he believed the show would continue despite losing its two hosts in the space of a single year simply because it ‘isn’t about the face, it’s about the format’.
He added: ‘Obviously the presenters have to know what they’re doing, they have to do a professional job, but it’s the content and the format that matters. There it is, it’ll carry on.’
This Morning airs weekdays from 10am on ITV1.
Source My Celebrity Life.