You get the TV presenters you deserve. In Ireland we had Claire Byrne and Ryan Tubridy. For the UK viewing public it was Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby who giggled and larked their way into the hearts and minds of their considerable audience on ITV’s This Morning, convincing their viewers to enter a dangerous medical trial for no reason. The giddy telly couple were instrumental to the scam because people trusted them. Willoughby wore nice clothes with a constant grin and Schofield had been around since his BBC Children’s TV days. They were the nation’s sweethearts. Untouchable.
The pair were as fake as the virus they pretended was causing the ‘pandemic’. Their fans lapped up their saccharine routine, overlooking the rumours that had dogged Schofield who pretended he was a straight, happily married father-of-two. That facade crumbled just before the Covid show hit town. The rumours had grown too loud so Schofield came out on live TV on February 8, 2020 after 27 years of marriage in one of TV’s cringiest moments. He claimed he ‘never had any secrets’ from his wife, Stephanie Lowe. That’s hard to believe. He certainly kept them from his blue rinse lady fans. Surely Lowe wasn’t clued in on her husband’s sexual shenanigans with the runner in his dressing room before switching to family man mode for the cameras.
As we approach the five year anniversary of that insipid TV confession, let’s look back and try and figure out what it was really about. Considering showbiz is the most gay industry in the world, coming out is unnecessary and frankly strange, especially at the ripe old age of 57. Nobody cares. If anything, Schofield was coming out as a compulsive liar with Willoughby holding his hand all the way, so proud of her best friend.
His former ITV co-presenter on This Morning, Eamonn Holmes later put it: “She (Willoughby) is being as false as he is and nobody is talking about the elephant in the room”. Holmes said he was conned into participating in Schofield’s coming out and claimed that it wasn’t the real story. On GB News, Holmes went further following the shock departure of Willoughby from This Morning in October 2023:
You just have to look at my phone full of people who are glad to see the back of the two of them but that doesn’t come out in public because there’s another word here, the F word, Fear. There is a fear, for some reason, he has, as Katie Hind in the Mail today says, ‘he had the power and my did he love to wield it’. Now no-one’s sure why he had this power within ITV but he did. And even at the end, ITV are still giving him programmes…they’re saying they’ll continue to support him. Support him in what?
On May 18, 2023, Phillip Schofield presented his final show on This Morning after 20 years. It followed revelations of an affair with a much younger male colleague (34 years his junior) who he’d first met when he was just 15 years-of-age. The story broke at the same time as Schofield’s brother Timothy was jailed for 12 years for sexually abusing a boy with the judge saying, “I have not heard a single word of remorse from you, only self-pity." Bad timing, perhaps.
On Channel 5’s Cast Away which aired in September 2024, Schofield blamed his brother’s sins for him losing his influential position on the daytime sofa, showing scant recognition for his own role in his downfall. He played the innocent, aggrieved victim in an effort to resuscitate his career and win back viewers. It didn’t work.
Schofield had paid his former colleague a six-figure sum in return for signing a non-disclosure agreement (NDA) so he would never discuss their relationship. In an interview with the BBC, Schofield insisted he had not groomed the young man after meeting him at a stage school, later getting him a job at ITV where he acted as his mentor and confidante. In the BBC interview on June 2, 2023, Schofield said he understood how Caroline Flack felt before she killed herself in February 2020 with so much media pressure. Her mother Christine publicly supported Schofield and blamed ITV for treating him like a commodity, saying the broadcaster had learned nothing from her daughter’s untimely death.
Does Phillip Schofield deserve special treatment because of his celebrity status even though he courted publicity throughout his career? YouTube funny man Daniel Boland certainly doesn’t think so in this review of Schofield’s return to the telly box, in Channel 5’s Cast Away.
“Dear old Phillip Schofield, he couldn’t just leave it at that. He couldn’t just slink off into the wilderness with his millions of pounds and never be seen again. No he’s back. He needs to tell his story, his side, his version of events”.
It’s still unclear if Schofield will make his way back on to the small screen again after his Cast Away flop along with so much controversy and non-stop lying, but as he repeatedly states the relationship with his younger colleague was unwise but not illegal. He’s biding his time for the public to forgive his misdemeanour. But was that the only affair he had on his wife? It looks like Schofield has more skeletons in his closet.
An old Snapchat video from March 7, 2018, has all the hallmarks of a veiled threat. Was Schofield sending out some kind of a warning? It appears that way. “Now you and I know this cannot end well,” says Schofield in his creepy garage as he stares down the lens, unflinching. There’s the esoteric meaning for those in the club (the threat) and the exoteric meaning for the general public, as in the alarm is broken and needs fixing.
The question remains if Phillip Schofield has lost his power to manipulate or has he still room to manoeuvre in the world of broadcasting? We’ll know if he manages to win back a key position on TV by convincing the public his relationship with the runner was a once-off, bad decision that deserves a second chance. Caroline Flack’s mother Christine might even help with a new law to go easy on celebrities caught misbehaving.
Phil and Holly’s fall from grace has shown us that even the untouchables in TV land can suddenly feel the cold flush of rejection at a minute’s notice. They really don’t like it after all that adulation and awards for services to propaganda. This pair’s antics during the Covid scam exposed their devious nature and how they were willing to fake it to make it, whatever the cost, laughing all the way to the bank - to hell with the collateral damage.
It’s another timely lesson to avoid worshipping false idols.
They’ll only lead you astray.
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