This Morning viewers were left cringing over the ‘awkward’ exchange between Holly Willoughby and Ruth Langsford after Eamonn Holmes’ savage comments amid the Phillip Schofield scandal.

All eyes were tuned in to This Morning on Monday (5 June) as Willoughby returned to the couch after her former co-presenter and close friend departed ITV after confessing to having an affair with a young This Morning employee.

The long-running ITV show became the centre of the Schofield controversy as former presenter Eamonn Holmes – who used to present the show on Fridays alongside his wife Langsford – made a bunch of blistering comments about Willoughby and Schofield.

ITV

It was bound to happen at some point, and viewers didn’t have to wait long until Willoughby and Langsford spoke to each other live briefly.

Following an interview with singer Adam Lambert, Holly told viewers: “Let’s find out what Loose Women are talking about today. Hi there, Ruth.”

Langsford, who appeared on screen live from the Loose Women studio, replied: “Yeah, we love Adam Lambert, too,” before blowing kisses.

All three women, including co-presenter Josie Gibson, were all smiles during the handover and the general vibe was chilled and professional. That didn’t stop viewers from finding the whole situation a bit awkward.

One fan tweeted: "Feel for Ruth! This is so wrong!"

ITV

Another viewer speculated: “Ruth looks incredibly uncomfortable."

While a third wrote: “Wow, Holly having to crossover to Ruth on #loosewomen, considering how Ruth's husband has been sniping about Holly, that must have been awkward.”

One social media user, who called Willoughby’s statement about Schofield earlier in the show ‘nauseating’, added: “Also cringe is the clip of Holly doing a link to L W hosted by Ruth with some seriously fake OTT smiles from the pair of them.”

It comes after Holmes went on a tirade against his former colleagues in an explosive interview with Dan Wootton on GB News last week.

Holmes claimed that out of all of the Loose Women panellists, ‘only one’ had a soft spot for Schofield while the others disliked him.

"There was probably a minority of one [Loose Women] who actually liked Phillip Schofield. One Loose Women out of ten or twelve," he claimed.

He claimed that the panellists felt ‘very demeaned’ by Schofield because of the way the disgraced TV presenter would handle the handover to Loose Women.

He said: "We always had to do this handover between programmes from This Morning and Loose Women about what was coming on next. The Loose Women always felt very demeaned by the whole thing because he was always so rude to them.

"I know the one Loose Women star who liked Phillip, and she probably only did so because she liked mixing in circles where she thought would open doors for her."

Meanwhile, Holmes also said that Willoughby should follow suit and leave This Morning just like Schofield. He told GB News: "Not only should Phillip go, but Holly should follow him out the door.

"I don’t think you’ll ever see Holly back on the couch again. Holly doesn’t know people’s names, either. This is legendary within the production teams, that how distant they are and how they just don’t care.

"There are people who say for her it's not about what Phillip did, it's not about protecting the young fella involved."