Holly Willoughby became ‘disproportionately angry’ after husband’s six-word question

Dancing on Ice and Celebrity Bear Hunt star Holly Willoughby, who turns 44 today, says she often gets angry at things many people would find “insignificant”

Holly Willoughby says she can get “disproportionately angry” by things her husband Dan says. (
Image: Getty Images Europe)

Holly Willoughby became “disproportionately angry” after her husband asked a seemingly innocuous question.

Holly, who celebrates her 44th birthday today, struggles with “micro controls” that can trigger “anxiety and sensitivity”. The Celebrity Bear Hunt star says these can often be set off by something many people think is “insignificant”.

In her memoir Reflections, the star highlights a moment when husband Dan Baldwin questioned why she was watching a television show, calling it “s***”. Holly says it “set her off” and made her overly annoyed.

She writes: “One of the problems with micro controls is that they are insidious; they are often opinions we have internalised without realising, and it’s so hard to point at them, to call them out. This means our anxiety and sensitivity about them is triggered in other ways by something that seems quite small and insignificant.

Holly Willoughby and her husband Dan ( 
Image:
Instagram)

“For example, if I’m watching TV and my husband suddenly asks, ‘Why are you watching this s***?’, it will spark something deep inside and I will get disproportionately angry about it. I think it’s because all these other screws of control and of judgement have been tightened in ways that I am not always conscious of, and actually, a really small, unimportant thing like this sets me off.”

Holly finds it important to stop and consider “what the situation represents” rather than what actually happened when she gets annoyed. She says the “flippant” comment about the television is something she sees as “someone trying to control” her.

The Dancing on Ice host admits she is “worried about control” in her life, something she may need to work on. Holly and Dan married in 2017 and share three children – Harry, Belle, and Chester together.

The couple met when Dan was a producer on Ministry of Mayhem, presented by Holly and Stephen Mulhern. He has also worked on TV shows such as Celebrity Juice, Through the Keyhole and Virtually Famous.

Holly and Dan ( 
Image:
@hollywilloughby/Instagram)
The pair are said to have bought their first home together in 2006. They held their wedding reception at Amberley Castle in West Sussex, where Fearne Cotton was a bridesmaid and Dermot O’Leary was part of the groom’s party.

It was Ministry of Mayhem, later renamed Holly & Stephen’s Saturday Showdown, where Holly made her name in the noughties. In 2006 she teamed up with Philip Schofield on Dancing on Ice, which she still presents almost two decades later.

She has since gone on to star in a host of popular shows such as Celebrity Juice, The Voice UK and the Surprise, Surprise reboot. She had a hugely popular spell fronting This Morning on ITV between 2009 and 2023.