Think, above all, Eamonn Holmes and GB News. If the rumour of the last few days can be believed, Holmes is coming to the end of his 15-year relationship with ITV and is about to sign up to do a thrice-weekly show on the right-wing news channel that nobody is watching.

But let’s not be hasty. It’s important to stress that, at the time of writing, there was nothing concrete to confirm this is happening.

Well, nothing apart from a Tweet by GB News regular (and a former colleague of Holmes at talkRADIO) Dawn Neeson confirming that it’s happening.

Oh, and Holmes gave Neeson’s tweet a like, which would appear to confirm her confirmation that it’s happening, without openly confirming that it’s happening.

Holmes joining GB News — did I mention it’s the right-wing news channel that nobody is watching? — would be a glorious union made in the bowels of TV hell.

The only wonder is that GB News didn’t try to take Holmes up the aisle sooner. He is, after all, their ideal type.

Who could resist the charms of a man who, in documents related to his unsuccessful legal challenge to have his taxes reduced to 20pc by HM Revenue and Customs last year, laid claim to being “the best live television presenter in the country”, who ITV had hired for This Morning because he “could do the job better than anyone else”.

While ITV has opted to remain silent on whether or not Holmes is off to join GB News, it appears the network no longer holds him in the same high regard he’s always held himself.

Last summer, Holmes and his wife Ruth Langsford were dropped from their Friday presenting slot on This Morning to make way for Dermot O’Leary and Alison Hammond.

Apparently, viewing figures on Fridays have gone up since the change.

If Holmes is really headed to GB News, he’ll be snuggling up in a berth alongside the likes of Dan Wootton and Nigel Farage, who’s what now passes for a star name at GB News since Andrew Neil bolted after hosting just eight shows, irritated by the innumerable technical glitches that plagued broadcasts in the first couple of weeks, and dismayed at the rightward lurch in tone the channel seemed to be taking.

Think of the freedom he’ll have. He’ll be able to say anything he wants with little fear of the consequences.

How could there be consequences when he’s on the right-wing news channel that nobody is watching? If a tree falls in a forest and no one is around, etc, etc.

Consequences have always been something of a thorn in Holmes’s side.

In April of last year Ofcom investigated after he suggested the conspiracy theory that Covid-19 is caused by 5G — which numerous leading scientists have dismissed as baseless — was perhaps worthy of some consideration, rather than just being rejected outright.

“What I don’t accept is mainstream media immediately slapping that down as not true when they don’t know it’s not true,” he said.

“It’s very easy to say it is not true because it suits the state narrative.”

Holmes apologised the following day. This was far from the first time he’d had to do so over his 15 years with ITV. His Wikipedia page has a fairly substantial section under the heading “Controversies”.

After interviewing a 20-year-old woman who was abducted and raped by a soldier while walking home, he asked her if she planned to “take taxis” from now on — a query that Britain’s Rape Crisis Centre felt sent out completely the wrong message to women.

On another occasion, Holmes’s unfortunate description of the mixed-race Meghan Markle as “uppity” — a word with historically racist connotations — attracted a lot of flak.

There’s no doubt Holmes is prone to making gaffes of Partridgean proportions, but the kindest reading — and one I’d accept — is that he’s more occasionally clueless and carelessly thoughtless than he is ill-intentioned.

He will stir things up, though, and that is what GB News’s (very small) audience will tune in to see.