TV comic Matt Richardson has opened up about his secret feud with Holly Willoughby.
The former Xtra factor presenter, 34, recalled how a joke he cracked in 2014 during a review for a new panel show called Reality bites triggered tensions.
Matt claimed that Holly didn’t like the joke, it was about her close friend Nicole Appleton.
He later revealed that during the 2021 series of dancing on ice, “they hardly spoke.”
He said in a TikTok video: ‘Holly Willoughby doesn’t like me, I don’t think. Many years ago, we are talking about 2014, I did a review in an office.
‘They were developing a new panel show called Reality bites and maybe I should be team captain.
‘When they first developed it, you run through the show. So we do walkthroughs and one of the people on that was Nicole Appleton.
‘In this panel setting, host Stephen Mulhern asked her: ‘Why were there three of you on it?’
And I said, ‘Because the three of them in that room add up to a celebrity. It got a laugh in the room, it was clearly a joke no matter what.
‘After that I became quite friendly with Nicole. We had a few mutual friends, we used to go out drinking. I’ve been to her house for a party.
Matt then claimed that three or four years later, Holly confronted him about the joke.
Nicole, a former member of the pop group All Saints, is a central part of Holly’s inner circle of famous friends, which also includes Emma Bunton.
He continued: ‘Holly comes to me about something and she says: ‘I have a problem with you.
‘She was in the room at the drive-thru because her husband’s company managed it. She said, ‘You made a joke about Nicole and it was unacceptable. How dare you?’ I was like, One, that was a joke. Nicole was placed next to me and I said, “Did that offend you?” And she said, ‘No it was fine, I understood, it’s not a problem.’
‘Holly goes, ‘Yeah, but still…’ and had a real turn on me, which was really weird. I was told by Holly Willoughby in the midst of this members club.
‘I didn’t really see her again until I did Dancing on ice when we hardly spoke because it was Covid and I was working out.’
It comes after Holly Willoughby joined her friend Nicole Appleton for a lunch date with friends at 1 Hotel MayFair in London on Friday.
It also comes shortly after it emerged that Holly is preparing to make her TV comeback with her own Youtube channel following speculation of a solo project.
