Holly Willoughby stepped away from her career as a TV presenter after the horrifying plot to abduct her was uncovered in 2023.
Some believed she would eventually return to TV, others thought she might concentrate on her Gwyneth Paltrow-style lifestyle business, Wylde Moon.
However, almost five years after its launch, it can be revealed that the business has dropped its jewellery line, and its podcast, and also seems to have parted company with its hair, beauty, style and energy editors.
In a filing to Companies House last week, Wylde Moon listed just two employees – understood to be Holly, 44, and her sister Kelly.
When it launched in 2021, it said it had a team of 14, and many contributors were listed on the website. No contributors are listed or credited any more.
On Tuesday, Holly posted a video of herself and her sister enjoying a ‘Wylde Moon away day’ at a spa in Sussex.
Holly wrote: ‘We drank the sacred cacao to open our hearts, selected oracle cards for guidance and crafted reed dollies as blessings of renewal and protection.’
Also present was Holly’s long-time clothes stylist and friend Patsy O’Neill.
Holly Willoughby at the launch of Wylde Moon in London, October 2021
Wylde Moon is not enjoying Goop-style expansion, although it continues to sell candles and reed diffusers
Accounts for the year to October 2024 show that Wylde Moon is not enjoying Goop-style expansion.
Net assets are noted as £4,831 – up from £1,885 the previous year. But the company owes £733,485 to creditors – up from £583,748 the previous year.
Among the creditors is HMRC, with a £67,262 liability for Corporation Tax. That would indicate it had made a taxable profit of around £250,000.
The focus of Wylde Moon seems to have narrowed, and there are no longer monthly posts about fashion, beauty or hair. Instead, it’s chiefly about well-being and astrology.
It continues to sell candles (£40 for a single-wick scented version), wax melts (£11), perfume (£42 for Holly’s ‘signature Eau de Parfum’) and reed diffusers (£45) – as well as Holly’s book Reflections (‘life lessons’ in finding beauty), which came out in 2021.
Holly frequently posts on Instagram to promote money-off deals for the business.
Back in 2018, she had been due to launch a lifestyle brand, Truly, with Dragons’ Den star Peter Jones, but pulled out with just a few weeks to go.
At the time, Holly said: ‘To launch a brand needs total dedication and at the moment this is not something I feel I can do without it starting to affect my family time at home.’
Jones and his interior designer partner Tara Capp, 48, went ahead anyway with the online shop.
Truly, which sells everything from cushions to clothes, is now stocked in John Lewis and via Next.
Holly has appeared in Netflix show Bear Hunt since leaving This Morning but it was not re-commissioned. She continues to be represented by her own company, Roxy Management, seemingly its only client.
She was one of the highest-paid presenters when on This Morning, alongside Phillip Schofield, with both on a reported £730,000 a year.
Last night I dreamt I had a fling with Mrs Danvers
English author Daphne du Maurier, author of Rebecca and The Birds, is being played by actress Emma Laird in a new movie about du Maurier’s rumoured late-life lesbian affairs
There was uproar some years ago over the suggestion that Daphne du Maurier — who wrote Rebecca, and also The Birds — had a number of late-life lesbian affairs.
The family of du Maurier, who died in 1989, aged 81, insisted that there was not a shred of evidence to support the claims.
But now there’s more to come, with a prestige film suggesting that the author — who was married, and a mother of three — had a lesbian sexual awakening as a young woman, and immortalised her first girlfriend in the figure of Mrs Danvers, the terrifying housekeeper in her gothic masterpiece, Rebecca. (The book – first line: ‘Last night I dreamt I went to Manderley again’ – has never been out of print since it was first published in 1938.)
The plot for the new movie is drawn from Rose Tremain’s ‘fictionalised drama’ The Housekeeper.
Actress Emma Laird who was in The Brutalist and 28 Years Later, is playing du Maurier as a young woman.
The housekeeper will be played by Caitriona Balfe. Anthony Hopkins and Helena Bonham Carter will also star in the project. Filming starts later this month.
Actress Emma Laird, who starred in 28 Years Later and The Brutalist, will be the leading lady
Miranda’s son salutations
Supermodel Miranda Kerr has the whole family meditating.
Kerr, who is not a Buddhist but is mad keen on mindfulness, says that Flynn, her 15-year-old son with Orlando Bloom, practises Vedic meditation with his own mantra.
Kerr revealed: ‘This new year, he said, ‘Mum, I want to meditate with you every morning at 6am, and do it for 20 minutes’.
‘On the days that he does it… he’s like, ‘I really noticed a difference. I felt much calmer’. ‘
She added that her six and seven-year-old sons Myles and Hart also meditate…with only the youngest, Pierre, excused.
He is two.
Supermodel Miranda Kerr (pictured) revealed that she meditates every morning at 6am with her 6-year-old son – but her toddler is excused
Now this is heartwarming: Ant and Dec both say that the favourite moment of their long careers was the day that Ant came back to work in 2019 – on Britain’s Got Talent – after his struggle with drink and drug addictions.
In August 2018 Ant McPartlin formally announced he would be taking a break after going to rehab for addiction (twice) and having a car accident. He returned in January 2019, for the Britain’s Got Talent auditions at the London Palladium.
Screen partner Declan Donnelly said: ‘I know my favourite Ant moment ever, and it’s fairly recent, but I think it’s one that will stick with me.
‘It’s when Ant took a bit of time out to get himself together, he had a little bit of time away, off telly, but that moment we came back together was just… that will always stick with me and reminded me how brilliant it was, and how lucky I am to get to do this job alongside my best mate.’
Ant replied: ‘Exactly the same. Exactly the same for me.
‘To be able to take that time out and get a reset and a new perspective on your life and have a real new gratitude for everything that you do.
‘But then to come back and your mate’s there, and then you just kick on and carry on how you left off.
‘Because that’s what true friendship is. We don’t judge one another, you just get on with it. Love each other.’
Ant and Dec touchingly both agreed that their favourite moment of their long careers was the day that Ant got back to work in 2019, having taken a career break after going to rehab for addiction and having a car accident
Adolescence star Stephen Graham has given his blessing to son Alfie, pictured with him, who is launching a modelling career.
‘Alfie’s a handsome lad!’ Graham exclaimed. ‘He’s an Adonis, the boy. You know what I mean? It’s like “Wooahh!”
‘Why am I getting embarrassed? He is going down the modelling route.
‘Good for him.’
Alfie has recently posted his first professional pictures on his Instagram page.
Stephen Graham pictured with his model son Alfie, who he called an ‘Adonis’
Alfie recently posted his first professional pictures on his Instagram page. Represented by @nextlondon @next Styled by @markanthonystylist Photographed by @neilgavinphoto Grooming by @joey.darbs
Will Fing movie give cancelled comedian Walliams the fairytale ending he craves?
David Walliams is plotting a comeback after his ‘cancellation’ over claims of harassment, which led to him being let go by publishers HarperCollins last year.
Walliams has denied all allegations of wrongdoing.
His children’s book, Fing, has been made into a film — and he has taken a small role as the headmaster in the movie. I hear that Walliams, pictured with Fing actress Iona Bell, will do some limited press to promote it, when it comes out later this year.
A friend said: ‘The consensus seems to be that the storm has passed. There is no ongoing dispute, or claims on either side.’
In December, a spokesperson for HarperCollins said it had decided not to release any new titles by Walliams ‘after careful consideration, and under the leadership of its new CEO’.
The Telegraph newspaper claimed that the move followed an investigation into allegations of inappropriate behaviour towards a number of young women, but HarperCollins did not confirm the reasons for its decision.
A spokesperson for Walliams said he had ‘never been informed of any allegations raised against him’ and added: ‘He was not party to any investigation or given any opportunity to answer questions.
‘David strongly denies that he has behaved inappropriately and is taking legal advice.’
Walliams is one of the UK’s most successful children’s authors, having sold more than 60 million copies worldwide in 55 languages since his first book, The Boy In The Dress, came out in 2008.
Children’s author Walliams is plotting a comeback after his ‘cancellation’ over claims of harassment
Pulpy, garish, vivid, sexy and BIG, there’s no question Emerald Fennell’s Wuthering Heights is going to be a hit when it opens next weekend.
There’s also no question that Fennell – bouncy, posh and self-confident – has little interest in serving the original source material.
Don’t go if you are a Bronte fan. Do go if you like your bodices heaving, and the romance turned up to 11.