‘I’m a forensic psychologist – here’s how Gavin Plumb became obsessed with Holly Willoughby’

The Plot To Kill Holly Willoughby premieres on Channel 5 this week, with a forensic psychologist looking at what enabled Gavin Plumb’s sick obsession with the former This Morning presenter

I’m a forensic psychologist – here’s what made Gavin Plumb obsessed with Holly Willoughby(Image: Dave J. Hogan/Getty Images)
A controversial new Channel 5 documentary about the plot to kidnap and kill Holly Willoughby sees forensic psychologists and experts examine how the former This Morning presenter’s stalker developed an unhealthy obsession with her.

Gavin Plumb was found guilty of soliciting murder and inciting rape and kidnap following a trial at Chelmsford Crown Court last year. The 37-year-old, from Harlow in Essex, was sentenced at the same court in July to life in prison with a minimum term of 16 years.

The sentencing judge, Mr Justice Edward Murray, told Plumb: “There is no doubt that if you had genuinely found one or more accomplices who were seriously interested in and had been willing to join you in carrying your plan through then you would have put this plan into action.”

Channel 5 is set to air a 90-minute documentary titled The Plot To Kill Holly Willoughby on Thursday night. Holly does not feature in the programme and it’s reported the mum-of-three’s team fear “that the events will be sensationally dramatised for effect.”

Gavin Plumb being arrested inside his house in 2023(Image: Essex Police)
In the upcoming feature, a forensic psychologist looks at Plumb’s life before his obsession with Holly began and what helped enable his sick fantasies. Speaking on the Channel 5 documentary, Kerry Daynes says: “Plum’s obsession with Holly Willoughby starts in around 2014. This is the time when he is more housebound and he’s spending a lot of his time just sitting and watching television.

“So she’s a regular feature on his television set and familiar, probably sees more of Holly Willoughby than then it does of any other woman apart from his mother. And of course, she’s a beautiful girl. I’m sure a lot of men fancy Holly Willoughby, but for him it becomes something more. It becomes an infatuation.”

She adds: “Most people who are infatuated by celebrities would like to meet them. They admire them. They wish good things for that celebrity. They are a fan. That’s not what we’re talking about here. It progresses from there into looking her up on the internet, starting to collect images of her. And then it goes into darker territory. He’s having sexual fantasies, about Holly Willoughby. He wants indulge those in a different way. So he goes looking for deep fake images of Holly.”

Philip Grindell, a former Metropolitan Police officer then shares how we are “seeing an increase in deepfake images and videos. Effectively, what it is, is somebody taking an image and putting somebody else’s face or head onto that image.”

Plumb in court last year(Image: PA)
Kerry continues: “A lot of deepfakes involve portraying that person in some sort of sexual context, and 99% of victims of deepfake pornography are female. And you’ve not consented to this. A lot of victims of deepfake say that when they have viewed deepfake images of themselves, it has felt like a sexual assault.”

In January this year, Holly broke her silence on the horrifying plot to kidnap, rape and murder her. She told The Sunday Times magazine: “It’s been a tough one. There’s no way of sugarcoating it.”

The Dancing On Ice presenter also said that “nothing can prepare you for something like that”, and you need to “decide, I can take this on board and it can absolutely affect all aspects of my life, or I can make a choice to go, let’s focus on everything that’s positive and good, all those important things”.

“I’m healthy and I’m happy,” she added. “I’ve got a wonderful husband and children and family, I’ve got great friends. You have to go: I choose to positively move forward and rely on all those people – the police, the court, the judge, the jury – all those people to do their role. And that’s what I had to do.”

Holly also said she never felt she would crumble as it was “not an option”, and that “so many people go through tough things, they just do”. She said that “every single person I speak to, and it seems more and more currently, are going through something”.

“I think that, although I wouldn’t wish what happened to me on anybody at all, sometimes things go wrong, but you have to keep going for it because that’s all you can do,” she added.

Holly said it was “really simple and easy” to step away from This Morning, and she would “be an idiot if” money was not important to her working in TV. However, she said it was not the reason she works in the field, where she presents Netflix series Celebrity Bear Hunt, but by “definition my work is a business”.

She added: “I’m not going to shy away from saying that. I think, sometimes, when women earn money people see it as a greedy, ambitious thing, but when men earn money? ‘Oh, he’s incredible, I want to be like him’. I don’t have any shame in saying it’s my business, it’s my work. It’s also all I have known. It’s what I do.”

*The Plot To Kill Holly Willoughby airs Thursday 1st May at 9pm on 5.