Phillip Schofield is back. In a ridiculously on-the-nose twist that effectively no one saw coming, the disgraced former This Morning presenter is going to be returning to screens tonight as part of a three part Cast Away special for Channel 5.
“Now you know how I spent my summer,” Schofield wrote on Instagram last week, “Alone for 10 days. No food. No water. No crew. My story of survival, both on a desert island and off it. Cast Away starts Monday on @channel5 & My5 at 9pm.”
His decision to return to screens has ruffled a lot of feathers. Schofield’s former colleague, Eamonn Holmes, has hit out at Schofield, saying he “deserves to be in exile” and “is addicted to fame.”
Meanwhile, the Irish Independent parroted Schofield’s own statement about his controversial relationship with a young man who worked on This Morning, calling the TV special “not illegal... but it is unwise.”
So, ahead of his return, let’s run back the tapes — literally. Here’s a break down of Phillip Schofield’s BBC interview from last summer, in which he admitted to an affair with a 20-year-old show runner on This Morning, who he first met when the runner was just 15 years old.
1. He denied having any sexual or romantic contact with the man before he was 20 years old
Despite Schofield having met the young runner when he was 15 after Schofield paid a visit to his school, the This Morning presenter insisted that there was no sexual or romantic element to their relationship until the runner was 20 years old.
The pair occasionally talked on Twitter when the boy was between 15-20 years of age, but Schofield said that it took a couple of months of the young man working on the show for it to become sexual between them both. “He’d been working on the show for a couple of months and we’d become mates, we were mates,” he said.
2. He paid for his ex-lover’s lawyer
Early in his BBC interview, Amol Rajan quizzed Schofield on the last time he and the runner with whom he had the affair had spoken. Schofield revealed that it was recently, when he set the runner up with a lawyer, who he (Schofield) has paid for. “He needed independent support,” Schofield said.
3. Their first intimate experience together was in Schofield’s dressing room
Perhaps the biggest bombshell of the interview came when Schofield admitted that he and the runner’s first intimate experience happened in his This Morning dressing room. “And then, in my dressing room one day, something happened,” he says, “which obviously I will regret forever, for him and for me, mostly him.” He later adds: “I kissed someone in the workplace, which led on to a little bit more.”
4. Schofield insisted they weren’t in love or a couple
Schofield claimed that he and the young runner had only “five or six” sexual encounters in total and that the two of them were never in love and were not boyfriends. Throughout the BBC interview he repeatedly called the former runner a “mate” and when Amol Rajan asked Schofield if he loved the young man, he responds: “No, we were just mates, we were mates.”
5. He said the runner hasn’t signed an NDA
Addressing the rumours of super-injunctions and non-disclosure agreements, Schofield said there was nothing of the sort in place. “No, I was asked that earlier on — did I make him sign an NDA? — no, absolutely not.”
He also denied claims that the runner was “paid off” by himself or ITV and said he is free to speak if he wishes, though he predicted that he wouldn’t want to. “What he wants is for all of this to all go away,” Schofield said, “he wants a quiet life, he didn’t want any of this to happen in the first place.”
6. ‘Holly didn’t know’
Reinforcing his co-host’s statement in which she said she was lied to about the relationship, Schofield said that Holly never knew about it, and that if she had asked “I would have denied it,” adding, “Holly did not know. Nobody knew.”
7. He said he had been near-suicidal
At one particularly tense point in the BBC interview, Schofield addressed the public, saying “Do you want me to die? Because that is where I am at,” and shared how his daughters have been effectively kept a suicide watch for the past month to make sure their father is safe.
“My girls saved my life,” he said, “they haven’t left me for a month, they’ve been by my side for a month because they’re scared to let me out of their sight [...] and they said to me ‘Don’t you dare do this on [our] watch.’”
8. He compared himself to Caroline Flack
In the same section of the interview, Schofield compared himself to former Love Island host and ITV icon Caroline Flack, who died by suicide in 2020 after her arrest for assault led to a tough period of public and press scrutiny. “How much do you want a man to take, and are you truly only happy when he’s dead? And this is how Caroline Flack felt... and it didn’t stop.”
9. Denied that there was any ‘toxicity’ at This Morning
After Schofield’s sex scandal brought This Morning’s off-screen relationships into question, some claimed that the show was a “toxic” place, and even complained of discrimination (this complaint was not upheld by ITV).
“Some people perhaps may be toxic and see toxicity everywhere because that’s the lens that they’re looking at the world [with],” Schofield said in the BBC interview, “there is no toxicity, there is no bullying, there is no bullying at This Morning.”
10. He and Holly are no longer on speaking terms
In the BBC interview last year, Schofield reassured that he had no issue with Holly Willoughby, but that she wasn’t speaking to him at that time.
“[The last time I spoke to Holly] I Whatsapped her on the day that I put the statement up and I said to her ‘I know you can’t reply, you’re probably not allowed to, but please know that I am so desperately sorry.’” Amol Rajan asked if Holly replied, and Schofield says, “No.”
It is unknown if the pair have reunited or had contact since this time period.
11. He claimed he didn’t buy taxis for the runner with ITV money
Responding to claims from ex-This Morning presenter Eamonn Holmes, alleging Schofield had used ITV money to buy taxis to and from his flat for the young runner, Schofield said: “He didn’t frequently come to my flat, he came to the flat once, to my recollection he didn’t stay over, he said he was passing and he was going to come in for a beer [...] Utterly, utterly untrue. And also I don’t have an ITV car account, presenters don’t get that.”
12. Refused to share if he had gay experiences before the runner
Schofield, who had been married to his wife Stephanie Lowe for over 30 years when the news of his affair broke, said he realised he was gay during his relationship with the runner.
“My relationship with my colleague coincided with that moment [of realisation],” he revealed. However, he refused to answer a question about whether he’d had gay experiences before, when he may have also been married, saying “I think this interview’s not about other experiences.”
