Holly Willoughby recalled finding dyslexia ‘shameful’ as a child during Thursday’s This Morning.
The presenter, 40, and her co-star Phillip Schofield were interviewing William Carter, 22 – who overcame being unable to read when he was 13 and is now he’s doing a PhD at The University of California, Berkeley – when she detailed her own battle.
‘For me, because I’m not very good at spelling, for years I felt shameful about that’, the host reflected, before she revealed the turning point in her journey came when she went to college.
‘I wouldn’t write in front of others’: Holly Willoughby recalled finding dyslexia ‘shameful’ as a child during Thursday’s This Morning
The Dancing On Ice star opened up about how she struggled with her experience during her younger years, revealing: ‘Dyslexia is such a broad spectrum, people have so many different forms of it.
‘Yes, I’m dyslexic also and I had to find my own tool kit and for me it was finding somebody who understood this who could teach me how to access those tools because at school it wasn’t really that well known then.
‘I wouldn’t write down in front of people because I didn’t want them to see, but it doesn’t bother me now that I can’t spell.’
‘I had to find my own tool kit’: The presenter, 40, opened up about how she struggled with her experience during her younger years
Impressive: The host and her co-star Phillip Schofield were interviewing William Carter, 22 – who overcame being unable to read aged 13 and is now he’s doing a PhD at UC Berkeley
‘I found somebody who could teach me how to access those tools’: The media personality added that she was able to cope with the condition when she received advice in her late teens
The media personality added that she was able to cope with the condition when she received advice in her late teens.
Holly added: ‘But when I went to college, there was one lady in particular I met who gave me so much advice and for me that was my turning point.’
Elsewhere in the episode, the TV star was left impressed by a young child who read an extract from Charlie and the Chocolate Factory for World Book Day.
‘Wow that was brilliant, my son Chester who is 6 is at home and he needs to up his game!’, the former Celebrity Juice panellist, who shares her youngest child, Harry, 11, and Belle, nine, with husband Dan Baldwin, said.
Dyslexia is a learning difficulty that can cause problems with reading, writing and spelling. One in every ten people has the lifelong problem in the UK and the US.
As well as struggling with reading, writing and spelling, other signs of dyslexia are confusing the order of letters in words and finding difficulty in carrying out directions, planning and organising.
Famous sufferers include actor Orlando Bloom, businessman Richard Branson, TV musician Jessica Simpson and screen star Tom Cruise.
People with dyslexia often have good skills in other areas, such as problem solving and creative thinking.
Last year, Holly confessed she believed everyone thought she was stupid in an interview with Red magazine.
The mother-of-three insisted she no longer lets dyslexia have the same power over her that it did while she was in school.
She told the magazine: ‘I’ve struggled with dyslexia since I was young and it used to hold me back. At school, reading out loud absolutely terrified me because I’d get all the words wrong and I was convinced everybody thought I was stupid.
‘It still happens now – most of the mistakes I make on This Morning are because of it, but it doesn’t do what it did to me back then because I don’t let it have power. I now know that it’s all about how you package it in your head.’
‘I’ve struggled with dyslexia since I was young and it used to hold me back’: Last year, Holly confessed she believed everyone thought she was stupid (pictured with her son Chester, six)