Fern Britton's agents admit not giving her 'This Morning' BAFTA invite after Schofield spat

Fern Britton and Phillip Schofield’s relationship became famously frosty towards the end of their tenure presenting This Morning together in the late 2000s.

But yesterday the awkwardness around the show’s 30th anniversary only intensified the situation, when Britton appeared to shame the current administration of the programme – and Schofield – for failing to invite her to BAFTA’s recent celebration of the show.

The Academy paid a special tribute to the long-running morning show on Monday this week, presenting an award for its service to broadcasting and throwing a party.

But, in an interview on the programme yesterday, Britton proceeded to explain to Schofield that while she’d have loved to have gone to the party, her invite must have got lost in the post, despite her having presented the show for a decade.

“Congratulations on BAFTA, that was absolutely wonderful. I’d have loved to have been there. But I didn’t get an invitation,” she told Schofield.

Britton is currently appearing in a production of the play Calendar Girls in Edinburgh, but said she was free for the party on Monday night.

Schofield later hit back, with a withering tweet, claiming Britton was invited, but had declined.

Responding, Britton said: “No. I had not invitation to decline.”

However, it appears that the problem has been solved, with Britton’s agents admitting that they cause the blunder.

It was long claimed that Britton and Schofield fell out after she discovered that he was being paid £250,000 a year more than her for doing the same job, though she later denied that money was an issue, and she was ‘happy’ with her salary.

But quotes from Britton and Schofield about their time on the show together have been notably cold ever since, and Britton did not make an appearance at the show’s 25th anniversary celebrations either.

On the pay gap row claims, she told Hello! magazine in 2016: “That certainly wasn’t true, not least because I had no idea what Phillip had been paid.

“I knew what I was being paid and it was more than fair.

“It is appalling that, if you are doing the same job as a man, you are paid less and I am absolutely all for equal pay but at the time, even if Phillip had been paid more than me, he was doing more programmes on television.”

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