Lorraine Kelly vs Esther McVey is truly the gift that keeps on giving as today Fiona Phillips has shared her thoughts, breaking the deadlock between the politician and presenter.
Unfortunately for McVey, Fiona has labelled the Tory leadership hopeful’s claim that she was promoted over Lorraine “an absolute lie”.
Writing in her Daily Mirror column, she explains: “How strange because she didn’t have a job at GMTV until she covered my three month maternity in 1999.
“How could she have been ‘promoted’, then, from a job she’d never held in the first place? Hmmmm.”
Fiona continues: “My mum told me at a very young age. ‘Don’t bother telling untruths because you’ll always get found out’.
“I wonder if Tory Leadership hopeful, Esther McVey was told that as a child?”
Ouch.
Fiona also addressed the matter in a MailOnline interview, adding: “She [McVey] was only on there because she was covering my maternity leave.
“During which I was asked several times by colleagues pleading to know when I was coming back. Esther was never presenting there permanently.
“She was at Channel Five I think at the time and she was jobbing, just trying to get work.
“But I don’t know because I wasn’t there. She said she had been promoted. But she wasn’t even there to be promoted. You don’t embellish your CV.”
The unexpected row started on Monday, when Lorraine diplomatically stated she didn’t remember whether she got on with the presenter-turned-politician when they worked together.
Lorraine’s low-key shade sent the internet into a spin and McVey soon responded with the claim that she had been promoted over the ITV veteran.
On Tuesday, Lorraine was less diplomatic and criticised McVey for stating that parents should be allowed to stop their children learning about same-sex relationships in school.
She said: “What it was, I just got sick to the back teeth of the political atmosphere.
“And I strongly disagree with her policies on LGBT rights and I just thought to myself, I’ve had enough of this.
“We’ve had two and a half years of people going round in circles and not sorting Brexit out.
“And now we’ve got a state in Britain where people are at each other’s throats and it’s got to stop.”