Phillip Schofield has said he will be “forever sorry” in his first television appearance in more than a year since his shock downfall.
Schofield, now 62, quit ITV and admitted to having lied about an “unwise, but not illegal” affair with a younger male colleague at This Morning last May. His agent parted ways with him and he has stayed out of the spotlight since.
On Monday, he will appear on primetime screens for the first time in 16 months, fronting Channel 5’s latest iteration of Cast Away. The three-part programme will follow Schofield as he battles to survive on an island off the coast of Madagascar for nearly two weeks. The show has been largely self-shot by Schofield.
In a screening of the first episode shown to press, Schofield said he had been “cancelled” after his exit from ITV and the ensuing public backlash over the affair. Describing the period afterwards, he said: “It is like the biggest grenade going off in your life and you know you let people down, you know you’ve let yourself down, it was an unwise and unprofessional thing to do.
“I will be forever sorry. You know, I screwed up. I made a mistake and I hurt the people around me.”
His wife, Stephanie Lowe, and daughters, Molly, 31, and Ruby, 28, also appear in the show. In a scene during a family barbecue, Lowe says: “What people don’t realise is that they batter [Phillip] but then there are other people affected.” Molly said the scandal had made the family closer and called her father “just amazing”.
The actor Joanna Lumley appears in a video message with survival tips for Schofield. The Absolutely Fabulous star fronted a BBC reality show called Girl Friday in 1994 when she had to survive nine days on the island of Nosy Tsarabanjina, near Madagascar. At the end of the message, she says: “I shall be thinking of you all the time Phil, and actually I’m a little bit jealous, lots of love.”
Later in the episode, Schofield suggests he was “so, so close” to killing himself. He said: “I had everything in place, everything was set up and everything was ready.
“Molly said: ‘Do you imagine what this would do to us if you actually managed to pull this off? Can you imagine what would happen and can you imagine what it would do to me if you did this on my watch?’ And that was just enough to take a step back from the edge.”
His return to primetime TV has met a mixed response. Mark Borkowski, a crisis PR consultant and author, rebutted Schofield’s claim that he is a victim of cancel culture. Writing in the Guardian, he said: “This was a spectacular career collapse sparked by a serious HR violation, an abuse of power and a betrayal of his inner circle, not to mention millions of viewers who saw one man and realised he was another.”
Borkowski said the show was “clearly designed to propel Schofield into a redemption arc” and that he must “put in the performance of a lifetime” to pull it off.
The journalist Siobhan Synnot told Times Radio this was a safe option for Schofield. She said: “He’s going to be in control of the narrative, he’s going to be able to talk to the camera. He’s the man who does the filming, it’s prerecorded. He can ask the questions that he’d love to answer, he doesn’t have to ask himself the awkward questions.”
The Loose Women co-host Nadia Sawalha said she “cringed” when the teaser for the show was released earlier this week. Speaking on her Coffee Moaning podcast, she said Schofield was “very clever” and “knows how to speak to an audience”.
“I have always stood up and against people in positions of power and money and status. I will always stick up for the young person that was swayed by that,” she added.
• In the UK and Ireland, Samaritans can be contacted on freephone 116 123, or email jo@samaritans.org or jo@samaritans.ie. In the US, you can call or text the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline on 988, chat on 988lifeline.org, or text HOME to 741741 to connect with a crisis counselor. In Australia, the crisis support service Lifeline is 13 11 14. Other international helplines can be found at befrienders.org
