Fern Britton has revealed that she almost quit This Morning five years ago - but co-host Phillip Schofield persuaded her to stay on. Speaking on The Justin Lee Collins Show the 51-year-old - who will leave the show in July - admitted, "He said this is going to be like Morecambe without Wise, like Ant without Dec, you cannot go." Fern added that the pressure of work and looking after her baby daughter at the time had almost caused her to quit. "Winnie was tiny and I was taking her in and out every day, feeding her in every commercial break," she recalled. However she described her decision to quit the show now as an "accumulation of tiredness I've had over the last few years." "And," she added, "we got the show back together, back on its feet." She also told the show that she knew she and Phillip would team up on air when they spent an afternoon sitting on the floor, drinking whisky and chatting. "It was like speed dating," she said, "but over a bottle of scotch that took about six hours."
