Holly Willoughby says at school she'd 'rather die' than speak in front of people

This Morning’s Holly Willoughby has said that when she was young she would “rather die” than speak in front of people in public.

The 42-year-old now spends her mornings talking on TV as she hosts the ITV show.

But she revealed she wasn’t always that way and that when she was a child she “barely” said anything at school.

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Willoughby opened up as she, co-host Craig Doyle and This Morning regular Nick Ferrari talked about Sir Keir Starmer’s pledge to provide speaking lessons for children.

Talking about how she was as a child, she said: “I would rather have died that stand up and speak in front of anybody.”

“But you can get better,” she said.

The TV star, who has three children, has also previously spoken out about her struggle with dyslexia, and has said it is the reason that she sometimes makes mistakes on This Morning.

Willoughby has been dealing with the learning disorder since childhood, and two years ago shared that she used to be scared of reading out loud at school.

“At school, reading out loud absolutely terrified me because I’d get all the words wrong and I was convinced everybody thought I was stupid,” she told Red magazine at the time.

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“It still happens now – most of the mistakes I make on This Morning are because of it, but it doesn’t do what it did to me back then because I don’t let it have power.

"I now know that it’s all about how you package it in your head.”

Watch: Holly Willoughby returns to This Morning and blasts Phillip Schofield