Piers Morgan knows better than anyone that the country is in lockdown: he’s been steadily tweeting about coronavirus (and how doomed we all are) for a couple of weeks now.

However, in a break from his usual scheduled Covid-19 content, Morgan decided to comment on Holly Willoughby’s appearance instead.

During a recent episode of Good Morning Britain, Willoughby and her This Morning co-host Phillip Schofield made a brief appearance to chat about what was coming up on their show.

Morgan, however, was more interested in Willoughby’s fashion choices.

“Your spring wardrobe has obviously arrived,” Morgan joked, looking Willoughby up and down.

“Thank you Piers, that’s the important thing right now,” she replied sharply.

It was a brilliant way to get things back on track. And, despite one more barbed remark from Morgan (“It’s whatever gets us through right now,” he said), the GMB host took Willoughby’s cue and switched his focus to the ongoing UK lockdown.

Of course, it’s not the first time Morgan has felt it his duty to comment on a female colleague’s outfit. Indeed, it wasn’t that long ago that he came under fire for commenting on meteorologist Laura Tobin’s “hot pants” (aka leather trousers).

“They’re the most skin-tight leather hot pants I’ve seen in many a year,” he said at the time, “and you’ve paraded them for your seven-day forecast.”

“They’re not hot pants – it’s just a pair of trousers,” Tobin calmly responded. “I’m just wearing a pair of trousers. [And] I just walked,” she added, in response to Morgan’s “parading” comments.

“If you wear skin tight leather trousers to present the weather you’re going to get people going ‘wow’,” he concluded, before the programme went to a break. 

In a world where workplace harassment continues to be allowed to happen to women up and down the country, it’s not OK for one of the biggest voices in the UK to normalise this kind of behaviour. 

Willoughby’s outfit isn’t there to get Morgan through his coronavirus anxieties: it’s literally just the clothes she put on her body. To go to work. Where she should be treated, just as Morgan treats Schofield, with respect.

End of.

Main image: ITV