‘Check out my bangers,’ says Holly Willoughby, holding up a string of uncooked sausages and falling into a fit of giggles at her swanky new kitchen island.Unveiling her twice-a-week YouTube show, the former This Morning star gives free rein to the naughty, fun-loving side we only occasionally got to see on TV.Another clip from her sparkly new project shows her being asked close-to-the-bone questions by comedian Katherine Ryan.The notoriously risque Ryan starts a game of ‘S**g, Marry, Avoid’, giving as choices presenter Romesh Ranganathan, actor Rob Beckett and comedian Josh Widdecombe, which prompts the giddy admission from Willoughby that she would ‘s**g Romesh’.And the 45-year-old is left further red-faced when her guest tells her: ‘I’m just sending Romesh the video of you saying you want to s**g him!’ (Ranganathan, Holly later told me, promised to send her a ‘right to reply’ response, though she remained tight-lipped about what exactly he said.)More laughs come as another comedian guest, Joanne McNally, dresses her in a series of tracksuits for a fashion skit.Yes, Holly is back, but the shackles are off and she’s laughing again. Two-and-a-half years after she sensationally quit This Morning after 14 years at its helm, she gave me a sneak peek yesterday of Holly Willoughby Together, the show she will launch next week.Seven months after I revealed the project, which she has been working on in secret for almost a year, she showed me a montage of forthcoming episodes over avocado toast and Paloma cocktails at the Langham Hotel in central London, while her 15-year-old daughter Belle watched excitedly. Holly Willoughby is back, but the shackles are off and she’s laughing again with a twice-a-week YouTube showIn fact, says Holly, Belle provided some inspiration, since she’s of a generation that no longer watches terrestrial TV but is glued to YouTube instead.Willoughby left This Morning after she learned, to her great distress and fear, that former security guard Gavin Plumb had plotted to kidnap, rape and murder her.Plumb was sentenced to life in prison with a minimum term of 16 years, but the psychological damage to Holly was done. Overnight, Britain’s best known TV host disappeared from our screens.Now all that is behind her. After a short clip of some of the new show’s highlights, she exclaimed: ‘I feel like I’ve just given birth!’I ask if she’s worried about the reaction to her new project, after all that’s happened. ‘I know I’m not everyone’s cup of tea,’ she said. ‘I know that and that’s fine. I don’t want to try to convince people if they don’t want to watch. I don’t fear what people think. I’ve had real fear, I know what that’s like. Your perspective changes after something like that.’The show will also, you sense, finally erase the trauma surrounding the end of her friendship with Phillip Schofield, her former co-host, who left This Morning after lying about an affair with a much younger colleague.Produced by her husband Dan Baldwin’s production company, Hungry Bear Media, and sponsored by online healthcare company and leading weight-loss provider Voy, Holly’s new offering is undoubtedly a lifestyle show in the This Morning mould, with content arranged into five sections: Talk Together, Cook Together, Look Good Together, Better Together and Hang Out Together. It is, though, far glossier with a logo in unmissable pink.In fact, no one would be surprised if the upper echelons at ITV look on enviously at their former star’s fresh take on the genre, especially as the viewing figures for This Morning, now hosted Monday to Thursday by Ben Shephard and Cat Deeley, are in the doldrums. In its heyday with Holly and Phil, ITV’s daytime flagship pulled in an audience of two to three million, but today struggles to stay above 500,000.In the Cook Together segment, Holly shares a recipe from an A-list pro. Stanley Tucci is one of the first guests, and she is also joined by younger chefs with largely online followings, such as Lauren Leyva, King The Chef and Original Flava.Holly hosts the fashion slot herself, joined by make-up artist Victoria Penrose, while Better Together offers practical guidance from experts on issues such as health, wellness and ‘life admin’.But it’s the Hang Out Together section which will no doubt draw fans, with Holly’s close friends – former Spice Girl Emma Bunton and All Saints singer Nicole Appleton, for example – joining her for a drink, chat and giggle. ‘Everyone knows what happened to me,’ she says. ‘Why should I not be able to carry on doing what I do because of what happened?’The mother-of-three insists it isn’t all laughs, however. She also wants to tell difficult stories and raise awareness of social issues.In one episode, she wipes away tears interviewing tech safety campaigner Ellen Roome, whose son Jools took his own life after a TikTok challenge went wrong.The show is filmed at a new, purpose-built studio in London which resembles a rather luxurious house. White walls, pretty sofas and of course a sleek kitchen, which I predict will be much talked about. Gone are Holly’s expensive floral dresses, which she wore on This Morning, and the stilettos too. Instead she has gone for more of a ‘cosy’ look of jeans and casual tops.Notably, she is presenting her show alone. She reminds me that the only time she has done this before was on a remake of Cilla Black’s Surprise Surprise from 2012 to 2015. But she insists she has ‘plenty of people around me’.Does she miss anything about her old days at the helm of This Morning? ‘Of course,’ she says. ‘I miss it so much. I miss my team, I miss the life. I loved that show. I really enjoyed it. We had 14 incredible years, and I felt really lucky that it was part of my life.’I don’t think you can work on something for 14 years, then just delete it in your mind. I had all my kids on that show. And I learned so much from it. I grew up on it, I was 28 when I started.’Following her resignation from This Morning, Holly spent many months trying to regroup. She says she ‘couldn’t think about work’ at first, immersing herself in domestic life with her family.Her return to TV was gradual, first hosting two episodes of You Bet for ITV and the Netflix reality show Bear Hunt in February 2025.Since then, she has been a stay-at-home mum to Harry, 17, Belle, 15, and 11-year-old Chester, which she ‘loved’. Now, however, she is ready to get back out into the limelight.’Everyone knows what happened to me,’ she says.’Why should I not be able to carry on doing what I do because of what happened?’