RICHARD EDEN: New trauma for Holly Willoughby as taxman seeks to close her company

She’s endured two torrid years since it first emerged that her co-presenter Phillip Schofield had pursued an affair with a much younger male colleague who was only 15 when Schofield first encountered him.

Things then became much, much grimmer when she learned that she was the subject of a kidnap and murder plot – prompting her to step down from ITV’s This Morning for her own safety, only five months after Schofield’s resignation.

But just as it seemed that Holly Willoughby had put that awful time behind her – bolstered by reports that ITV is eager to offer her a new £1million deal which would see her host three different shows – I can reveal that she faces another ordeal.

This time the 43-year-old star is up against a far better organised foe than her would-be murderer, the hideous Gavin Plumb, who, to Holly’s intense relief, was imprisoned for a minimum of 16 years last July.

She’s in the sights of the taxman. Indeed, this week HMRC opened fire by issuing a winding-up petition against Roxy Media, the company which Holly and her husband, television producer Dan Baldwin, 46, set up back in 2008.

It’s an intriguing development. Roxy Media owed £330,000 in corporation tax, as recorded in its most recently submitted accounts, but one of Holly’s representatives tells me that no informed comment can be made at this stage.

She’s endured two torrid years since it first emerged that her co-presenter Phillip Schofield had pursued an affair with a much younger male colleague who was only 15 when Schofield first encountered him

Gavin Plumb was imprisoned for a minimum of 16 years last July after he plotted to kidnap, rape and murder Holly Willoughby

A financial expert surmises that the confrontation may arise from differing interpretations of Holly’s tax status. 

‘It’s possible that her This Morning salary was paid into the company as freelance income,’ she tells me, ‘whereas the tax office may consider that she was employed by ITV and that the income should have been taxed on a PAYE basis.

‘You’d expect HMRC and Roxy Media to have been in dialogue,’ the expert adds, ‘so it’s possible that the tax office has issued the petition in a bid to hurry things up.’

At least Holly can console herself that she has a bolt-hole where she can remain aloof from the fray while her accountants go into battle on her behalf.

Last year, she and Dan snapped up a six-bedroom house away from London – paying £8million for it, without a mortgage.