Phillip Schofield today claimed his two daughters have saved his life since he quit This Morning, insisting he ‘wouldn’t be here’ if they had not stayed by his side over the past week because he has ‘lost everything’.
The 61-year-old former This Morning presenter said the fallout from his admission that he lied about his affair with a younger male colleague had been ‘relentless’, revealing he has had suicidal thoughts.
Schofield told how his two daughters Molly, 29, and Ruby, 27, ‘guarded me and won’t let me out of their sight’, adding that he had felt a ‘weird numbness’ but admitted: ‘I have brought myself down’.
Schofield said: ‘My girls saved my life. They said last week they haven’t left me for a moment. They’ve been by my side every moment because they’re scared to let me out of their sight. What is that like for daughters to have to go with something like that?
‘And they said to me, “don’t you dare do this on our watch. We’re supposed to be looking after you”. If my girls hadn’t been there, I wouldn’t be here, because I don’t see my future.
TV presenter Phillip Schofield speaks to the BBC’s media editor Amol Rajan about his affair
Phillip Schofield with his wife Stephanie Lowe and daughters Molly and Ruby in London in 2018
BBC journalist Amol Rajan interviewing Schofield
‘And so 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. And I know I’ve done something wrong and I’ve owned up to doing something wrong.’
He also said, ‘I think I understand how Caroline Flack felt’, in the interview with the BBC’s Amol Rajan – Schofield’s first following his exit from This Morning last week.
Love Island host Flack was found dead in February 2020 at the age of 40, and a coroner later ruled she took her own life after learning that prosecutors were going to press ahead with an assault charge following an incident with her boyfriend Lewis Burton.
The broadcaster also said he had ‘lost everything’ in the wake of the revelations, admitting his ‘career is over’ and there had been a ‘catastrophic effect’ on his mind.
Schofield went on: ‘I did something very wrong and then I lied about it consistently and you can’t live with that. How do you live with that?’
The father-of-two was photographed being driven in London yesterday while sitting in the back seat of a car next to a woman believed to be his daughter Ruby. Schofield’s other daughter Molly is said to still be working for his former talent agency YMU.
MailOnline revealed yesterday that Molly only found out about his statement in which he admitted lying over his relationship just minutes before the story broke.
Phillip Schofield with his wife Stephanie and their daughters Ruby and Molly in London in 2016
Schofield with his children Ruby and Molly at the British Soap Awards in London in 2009
Schofield with his wife Stephanie and children Molly (left) and Ruby (right) in London in 2002
Speaking for the first time, Schofield revealed:
- He met the man at the centre of the scandal when he was 15 and in school. They began a sexual relationship when he was 20 and working at This Morning. Schofield denied it was grooming and said any sexual contact was ‘consensual’
- Phillip said that he would have taken his life by now if it wasn’t for his two daughters, claiming: ‘I think I understand how Caroline Flack felt’;
- The broadcaster believes his TV career is over and he will never be on the nation’s screens again;
- The star has begged Holly Willoughby for forgiveness by text – but she has not replied. He denied that they had been at the heart of any ‘toxicity’ or bullying at This Morning, insisting that culture didn’t exist;
- He thanks his family for their support – but admits his relationship with his wife Stephanie is ‘not great right now’;
- Schofield hit back at critic Eamonn Holmes, declaring: ‘All I see is angry people shouting about a show they’re not on any more’;
- Phillip claimed the reaction to his age gap romance was ‘homophobic’ – and said it would have been different if it
- was a man and a woman;
He also said: ‘Last week, if my daughters hadn’t been there then I wouldn’t be here. And they’ve guarded me and won’t let me out of their sight.
‘It’s like a weird numbness. I know that’s a selfish point of view, but you come to a point where you just think, how much are you supposed to take? If all of those people that write all that stuff, do they ever think that there’s actually a person at the other end?’
Asked by Rajan, the BBC’s media editor, if he was strong enough to do the interview, Schofield replied: ‘I have to.’
When pressed as to why, Schofield said in reference to his younger former lover: ‘Because there is an innocent person here who didn’t do anything wrong, who is vulnerable and probably feels like I do.
‘And I just have to say, stop with him… leave him alone.’
Schofield also told of the criticism he has faced since admitting the affair, saying: ‘Do you want me to die?’
He said he saw ‘nothing ahead’ of him and he had to talk about his career in television ‘in the past tense’.
He said: ‘It is relentless, and it is day after day, after day after day.
‘If you don’t think that that is going to have the most catastrophic effect on someone’s mind. Do you want me to die? Because that’s where I am. I have lost everything.’
Schofield also said he was not a victim of the situation around his hidden affair, but added: ‘I feel a victim of hate after the event, and I think there will probably be a lot of people watching this now thinking ‘How dare you?’.
‘It would be easier for me to say I don’t feel like a victim.
‘What I feel a victim of is spun areas of non-factual information and gossip and nastiness. But I don’t look any more.’
Schofield added that being dropped as an ambassador by the Prince’s Trust charity ‘broke my heart’.
‘I can’t remember how long I’ve been there,’ he told the BBC.
Schofield also said he first started following his former lover on Twitter when he was aged 15 after he was asked to do so by a friend.
He explained he was invited by a friend to go to a school, something he said he has done ‘thousands of times’.
Schofield claimed he was later asked to follow ‘a fan’ back on Twitter, who was aged 15 at the time – to which the presenter agreed.
‘I follow 11,300 people and in all the time that I’ve been on Twitter there has never been any whiff of impropriety’, he added.
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Schofield said the last time he interacted with his former lover was a ‘couple of weeks’ ago when he ‘engaged a lawyer for him’, adding: ‘He needed independent support. So that was the last time.’
He later confirmed that he was paying for the man’s legal advice.
Schofield also told the BBC the younger man was 20 the first time they had any ‘kind of sexual contact.
Recounting the first time they met, Schofield told Rajan: ‘I was invited by a friend of mine to go to open a drama school. But whether it was immediately or sometime after, he said, ‘Will you follow him on Twitter, because he’s a fan’. So I said, ‘Yeah, sure, no problem’, which I did.’
Rajan added: ‘And he was what, 15 at the time?’
Schofield said: ‘I follow 11,300 people, and in all the time I’ve been on Twitter, there has never been any whiff of impropriety.’
He went on to say the pair were ‘hardly’ in touch, but the young man had later gotten in contact to ask ‘if he could visit the studios, work experience type of thing. I said come down and have a look, for sure, which he did.’
Schofield told Rajan the man was 19 when he had first expressed interest in a television career, and when asked by Rajan if, looking back on their messages, there was ‘any sense in which you were flirting with him?’, Schofield said: ‘No, I’ve been 41 years in television. Nothing like this before. No accusations. I mean, this is all accusations.’
Schofield also denied he had any sexual interaction with his former This Morning colleague when the younger man was under age, but said their later affair was ‘unforgivable’.
Asked directly by Rajan if he had any kind of sexual relationship when his former lover was under age, Schofield said: ‘God, no.
‘In my statement, it says ‘consensual relationship, fully legal’ – I mean, that was approved by both sides.’
Recalling how the affair began, Schofield said: ‘He’d been working at the show for a few months and we’d become mates, we were mates. Around the studios we’d hang out together, chat to each other, that sort of stuff.
‘And then in my dressing room one day something happened which obviously, I will regret forever for him and for me – mostly him.
‘That happened maybe four or five times over the next few months, and I know it’s unforgivable, but we weren’t boyfriends, we weren’t in a relationship.
‘I was really in a mess with my sexuality at the time and it just happened.’
Schofield was seen in the back seat of a car yesterday next to a woman believed to be his daughter Ruby
Schofield was seen taking drags from a light blue vape as he answered questions from The Sun
In a separate grilling by BBC’s Amol Rajan, he was quizzed over a photograph which showed him attending the young man’s drama school when he was still a pupil and only 15 years old
Holly Willoughby has taken to Instagram to promote a hair product – but did not respond to Phillip Schofield’s interviews
Schofield revealed his most recent texts with Holly over the scandal – he has not received a reply to his most recent one (texts recreated by MailOnline above)
Mr Schofield has said he ‘didn’t tell anybody’ about his affair with his former This Morning colleague but disagreed with any implication of ‘grooming’ the young man.
Asked by the BBC’s Amol Rajan about who on his team knew about the relationship, the presenter said: ‘Nobody to my knowledge. I mean somebody has to know something for there to be a rumour later on. I didn’t believe that anybody knew.’
Schofield reiterated that he never told his former co-host Holly Willoughby, adding: ‘That’s a bigger question because our make-up room was like a sanctuary so you tell everything in that room.
‘Holly knows everything about me, I know everything about Holly. Holly did not know. Nobody knew. I didn’t tell anybody.’
Rajan said the crux of the issue is whether there was a potential ‘abuse of power’, adding that it might be perceived as ‘grooming’.
‘The circumstances are as follows: you met someone who was a child, you were in a position of power over them. You use your power eventually to give them something they craved, which was shot at a job in the media. You nurtured a relationship and then that relationship became sexual. And they might ask, what’s the difference between that and grooming?’
Schofield replied: ‘Well, I would say that the initial list of things was not right anyway.
‘Because it was a totally innocent picture, a totally innocent Twitter follow, of which I follow 11,400 people, and then it was a completely innocent backwards and forwards over a period of time about a job, about careers.
‘What’s wrong with talking to someone no matter what age they are? Does that mean that if you are following anyone on Twitter that you absolutely don’t talk to anybody else or you don’t give advice? So I disagree with the summation that you just gave, because that does paint a very grave picture.’
Phillip Schofield has denied allegations that his former This Morning colleague was made to sign a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) to keep him silent over their affair and feels the truth is coming out now as ‘the lie got too big for both of us’.
The BBC’s Amol Rajan asked: ‘Do you know if he has signed an NDA, a non-disclosure agreement, preventing him from speaking?’
Schofield said: ‘Did I make him sign an NDA? No, absolutely not.’
He also said there is no injunction or any NDA preventing media coverage of their relationship and that his former lover was not paid off for his silence.
‘I mean, what he wants is for all of this to go away. He wants a quiet life,’ Schofield added of his former colleague’s stance on the matter.
Asked why he believes the story is coming out now, Schofield said: ‘The lie got too big for both of us. It just got enormous.
‘It was growing and growing and growing. And it crossed over from the from online to mainstream news.’
underlined that there was no ‘sexual forwardness’ towards his former lover until he was a colleague at This Morning and aged 20 or 21.
Asked by the BBC’s Amol Rajan how old his former ITV colleague was when they had the affair, Schofield said: ’20 or 21.’
Schofield confirmed he did help him get a showreel together but said the younger man ‘was then given a job on his own merits because he was very good’.
Seeking to clarify the nature of their relationship when the former colleague was underage, Rajan said: ‘Just be really clear, your relationship between when you met him when he was 15 and then when he was 18 was occasional direct messages… no pictures of each other sent to each other?’
Schofield responded by shaking his head.
Asked whether the messages were flirtatious, the former TV presenter said: ‘Just work-related, just career advice, career help.’
Schofield also agreed there was ‘no sort of sexual forwardness’ at that time by another shake of his head.
Schofield resigned from ITV last week and was dropped by his talent agency YMU after admitting to the ‘unwise but not illegal’ relationship.
In his first newspaper interview since leaving the broadcaster and This Morning, he said he was ‘utterly broken and ashamed’ but denied claims he had ‘groomed’ the man.
The former Dancing On Ice presenter told The Sun that the fallout from his secret affair had brought ‘the greatest misery’ to his former lover’s ‘totally innocent life’.
He also denied there had ever been a ‘feud’ between him and his former co-presenter and ‘TV sister’ Holly Willoughby.
‘I’ve lost my best friend. I let her down,’ he told The Sun.
‘Holly did not know. And she was one of the first texts that I sent, to say, ‘I am so, so sorry that I lied to you’.’
Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby on the sofa of ITV’s This Morning last month, on May 11
Holly Willoughby and Phillip Schofield during a photo call for Dancing On Ice 2023 in January
Schofield meets Charles, then Prince of Wales, at the annual Prince’s Trust Awards in London in 2019. Schofield said that being dropped as an ambassador by the charity ‘broke my heart’
The pair had presented This Morning together since 2009, with Willoughby due to return to the show on Monday after the half-term break, having taken an early holiday after news of Schofield’s departure emerged.
Alison Hammond and Dermot O’Leary have been among the presenters hosting the programme in recent weeks.
Schofield went on to say that his ‘greatest apology’ over the fallout from the affair was to his former lover and that he would ‘die sorry’ for what he had done.
In a sign he believes his television career is over, he told Rajan: ‘I see nothing ahead of me but blackness and sadness and regret and remorse and guilt.
‘I’m not in television any more, I don’t know what I am even remotely… if I get through this.
‘I don’t know even remotely how I move forward. What am I going to do with my days?’
It comes after ITV boss Dame Carolyn McCall was summoned to a parliamentary committee on June 14 to answer questions about the broadcaster’s approach to safeguarding and complaint handling following Schofield’s exit.
The chief executive revealed in a letter that ITV had instructed barrister Jane Mulcahy KC, of Blackstone Chambers, to carry out an external review of the facts.
It also said the broadcaster had ‘reviewed’ its records and said ‘when rumours of a relationship’ between Schofield and an employee of ITV emerged, they ‘both categorically and repeatedly denied the rumours’.
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Body language expert JUDI JAMES reveals what Phil DIDN’T say out loud in his interviews
Phillip Schofield looked ‘diminished and hunched’ with a ‘vulnerable gaze’ as he broke his silence after confessing to an affair with a much younger colleague, a body language expert claimed last night.
The former This Morning star sat down yesterday to speak for the first time since leaving the ITV programme, saying he will ‘die sorry’ for the ‘grief’ he inflicted on his young male lover.
Body language expert Judi James told MailOnline that while Schofield was quizzed on his affair, which he previously dubbed ‘unwise, but not illegal’, he sucked on and massaged his blue vape ‘like a stress ball’.
The former host had ‘his shoulders slumped’ with ‘deep groves at the sides of his mouth suggesting misery’ as he categorically denied that he did not groom his former lover.
As Schofield told of his pitiful text to his co-host Holly Willoughby to tell her how ‘deeply, deeply sorry’ he was for lying to her about his secret relationship, Ms James told MailOnline he had a ‘classical facial full of sorrow’.
READ MORE: Read Judi’s full analysis here
