PHILLIP Schofield has recounted the exact moment his agent told him he had been ‘let go’ from This Morning.
The 62-year-old had hosted the flagship ITV programme for 21 years before being ‘axed’ by bosses last year.
During the final episode of his Channel 5 show Cast Away, Phil revealed he was apparently sacked for his paedophile brother’s crimes.
Timothy Schofield was found guilty last year of 11 counts of child sex abuse.
Before admitting to his affair with a young runner on This Morning, Schofe claims his agent told him a decision had been made to drop him over the publicity of his brother’s trial.
He said: “That’s it, it’s done. You’re not going back on Monday. What? Because of what?
“I think it’s the publicity though. That’s got nothing to do with me. That has nothing to do with me. Why would I be sacked for something that somebody else did?
“I’ve just been fired. Because of him. Because I was becoming more of a story than the programme. It was better for the show, better for the channel.
“And I agreed to say that I’d resigned because… It would be neater for everybody. I was always open and honest with everyone at work about what was happening with my brother.
I was fired for the bad publicity. For someone else’s crime.
“And the thing is, about a week later, I blew my own wheels off with everything else, because I thought the only way to even begin to put this right for everybody is to do a full mea culpa. I came clean about my affair.
“What people don’t realise is, I wasn’t fired from this morning when I admitted lying. It was before. Because of someone I used to call brother. But that is my last story.”
However, an ITV insider this week rubbished Phil’s claims and branded him a ‘liar’.
They told The Mirror: “Phillip’s new comments are simply untrue, he is lying again.”
“We stood by him through his brother’s court case and he then stepped away when things became too much,” the source said.
“He then admitted himself he had been lying about an affair and he resigned from ITV altogether.
“We didn’t sack him, he lied to us and then he resigned, there is not much else to say and we as a network just want to move on.”
By Rod McPhee
OVER three nights – and three hour-long episodes – Phillip Schofield has been bearing his soul in new Channel 5 show Cast Away.
And it’s basically a chance for the former This Morning host to explain the circumstances that saw him leave the show last year.
To put it mildly, he left under something of a cloud, admitting he’d had a fling with a much younger runner on the programme. But in the C5 show he presents his own versions of events – one which is at odds with the narrative that emerged at the time.
He was portrayed as a man who’d had an “unwise” affair, who’d resigned as a result and had let many of his colleagues down.
But in Cast Away Philip insists he was fired by ITV and not for the affair, but because of the bad publicity that surrounded the crimes of his paedophile brother. He summed it up best when he claimed he’d been “pushed under a bus.”
After watching Cast Away what you’re left with is something rather confusing, however.
Did Philip think he’d done something wrong by having the fling with the runner, or not? For example, he said he wouldn’t have been slammed for it quite so much if it were a heterosexual fling.
He said he: “would have received a pat on the back for having an affair with a woman.” This infers that the only thing wrong with it was that it was a same sex fling. So why does he also say: “I will be forever sorry. I screwed up. I made a mistake.”
The answer, I suspect, is that the whole affair was a murky business. There were so many blurred lines around appropriateness, professionalism and honesty.
The only firm conclusion you can draw from the show is that Phillip himself isn’t ENTIRELY sure to what extent He was guilty of wrongdoing.
Amid the confusion, what will the viewing public think? I suspect that this will leave those who disliked Phillip to feel even more suspicious of him.
Those who backed him, will feel reassured too. But those who still aren’t sure what to think will be none-the-wiser – and I’m not sure if that’s what Phillip would have wanted.
