You Might Have Missed Alison Hammond's 'Are You OK?' Nod During This Morning Comeback

On Friday, Alison Hammond made a triumphant return to This Morning a week after suffering a panic attack live on air that forced her to leave the studio mid-broadcast.

But what you might have missed was that she made a cheeky dig at one of the show’s most infamous moments in the process.

Towards the end of Friday’s Lorraine, Alison and co-host Dermot O’Leary spoke to the host via video-link about what they had coming up on that day’s edition of This Morning.

During this conversation, the Great British Bake Off presenter had Lorraine Kelly howling when she referenced Holly Willoughby’s now-infamous This Morning opener in 2023, declaring: “Are you OK? I hope you are!”

Alison’s comment was, of course, a nod to Holly’s 2023 broadcast, which marked her first show back after the scandal surrounding her former co-host Phillip Schofield was made public.

“Right, deep breath. Firstly, are you OK? I hope so,” Holly told viewers at the beginning of the show three years ago, in what has gone on to become a piece of British TV history.

During Friday’s edition of This Morning, Alison was heard thanking the public for their messages of support, as well as Dermot for “holding the fort” in her absence.

“All I can say is, in that moment, it was probably one of the scariest things that I’ve ever been through,” she admitted. “It was surreal. I felt like I went into the other world [like in] Stranger Things. I felt like I’d gone into the Upside Down world.”

Following the incident a week earlier, Alison had undergone tests on her heart, with medics eventually concluding that she had suffered a panic attack. 

“I feel guilty that I didn’t have a heart condition or anything, a little bit, because it was so much of a fuss,” she quipped. “But I didn’t know! It was the first time I’ve ever experienced anything like that.”