PHILLIP SCHOFIELD, THIS MORNING AND THAT WHOLE KETTLE OF FISH. BY SANDRA HARRIS.

 

PHILLIP SCHOFIELD, THIS MORNING AND THAT WHOLE KETTLE OF FISH.

BY SANDRA HARRIS. ©

Things are not exactly tickety-boo for former ITV presenter Phillip Schofield at the moment. In fact, May has really been the month from hell for the silver-haired sixty-one-year-old who has spent the last twenty years presenting ITV’s flagship television show, THIS MORNING.

Firstly, his relationship with his THIS MORNING co-host Holly Willoughby was reported in the media as being ‘on the rocks,’ even though she’d supposedly been his Numero Uno support after he ‘came out’ as gay on the programme in 2020, after twenty-seven years of marriage.  

Then, after weeks of intensifying rumours and speculation, Schofield steps down from his THIS MORNING presenting role, followed a few days later by his statement admitting to his affair with ‘a younger male colleague,’ as a result of which he’s stepping down from ITV permanently. He won’t present the upcoming British Soap Awards, and I presume they’ll have to replace him on reality TV show DANCING ON ICE as well.

How much of this was Schofield jumping before he was pushed? He’s been dropped by his agent, he’s been engaged in a pointless war of words on social media with former THIS MORNING presenter Eamonn Holmes, who has called Schofield ‘delusional,’ and let’s not forget that Schofield’s younger brother Timothy was jailed recently for child sex offences and the grooming of a teenage boy.

Schofield (Phillip) was certainly very quick to say to the press, ‘As far as I’m concerned, I have no brother.’ Cold. But also a tad hypocritical of him, as many people are convinced that the ‘young male colleague’ with whom Schofield admitted having an affair was only a minor when they met and began sleeping together. So, you know, pot, kettle, black and all that jazz…

It seems to have been a sort of an open secret that Schofield had possibly ‘groomed’ this young fellow who came to work on THIS MORNING for a while. When sex offender and former entertainer Rolf Harris was revealed last week to have passed away some days before, my Twitter feed was filled with two things.

Pure and utter hatred towards the deceased television presenter and his ‘didgeridoo,’ and pictures of Phillip Schofield with Rolf Harris’s trademark white beard and hair photoshopped onto them. The comments frequently contained the words paedophile and nonce, addressed towards Schofield as well as Harris.

My own son had been telling me about the rumours for months, rumours that the squeaky-clean, whiter-than-white Phillip Schofield from THIS MORNING had once, not so very long ago, had an illicit relationship with a (possibly) underaged boy. That can’t be true, I kept insisting. He wouldn’t be allowed to work on THIS MORNING if there was anything shady or dodgy about him. Well, how wrong I was…

Now, of course, we know that Schofield lied to pretty much everyone about this relationship, saying it didn’t happen. He lied to his co-host Holly Willoughby and he lied to his bosses at THIS MORNING and ITV. He may also have lied to family and friends.

ITV are saying that they investigated these claims of an illicit relationship when they were brought to the station’s attention back in 2020, and it was found that there was not so much as a shred of evidence to support the claims, so the matter was closed.

I’m not going to speculate now on the future of Phillip Schofield. There are enough people doing that already. What I really want to say is this. It’s a mistake to give any one person too much power, innit? Absolute power corrupts absolutely. Just look at what happened with Jimmy Savile, a loathsome creature if ever there was one.

Savile used his position as Britain’s favourite person and the BBC’s top entertainer-presenter to sexually abuse the young women and girls with whom he came into contact. He also met scores of possible victims in the hospital where he worked as a volunteer porter and in Broadmoor, where he was supposedly ‘Head of Entertainment’ and had his own key to come and go as he pleased, which he did.

He fronted music programme TOP OF THE POPS which always needed teenage girls as audience members. It was a bit like letting the fox loose in the chicken coop. Savile always claimed it was the bands they’d come to see and not him, but that was just his favourite get-out-of-trouble clause. He abused teenage girls backstage at the BBC and the BBC have sworn to never let such a terrible thing happen ever again.

Seemingly, no-one could bring Savile down because he was too powerful. Some brave people complained about his touchy-feely groping and grabbing, and were told, ‘Oh, that’s just Jimmy, that’s just his way.’ Blind eyes were turned all over the place.

 Others complained and were ignored or dismissed. It was said that he had the police in his pocket. Certainly they came round to his apartment every week for a nice chinwag and a brew. What was the point of reporting him? You’d only be getting yourself into trouble.

Savile even gave interviews in which he said that he was quite sure that his tireless charity work and fundraising for good causes would more than cancel out any bad deeds in the eyes of the good Lord. What were these bad deeds, as if we didn’t know?

See what I mean, though? Too much power! I daresay Phillip Schofield thought that he himself was untouchable after so many years as a ‘national treasure,’ being paid £650,000 yearly to be the pleasant and amiable face of the nation.

No doubt he thinks that this will all ‘blow over,’ and if he just apologises and lies low for a bit, all will be forgiven and he’ll be back on the air. It worked for Ant McPartlin, after all, back in 2018 when he drove drunk into the car of a young couple and their four-year-old daughter.

A slap on the wrist, missing one season each of BRITAIN’S GOT TALENT and I’M A CELEBRITY; GET ME OUT OF HERE!, a stint in rehab and Ant was back on the box with his showbiz partner Dec, as happy as Larry. Another example of so-called ‘stars’ getting away with things that you or me wouldn’t, seeing as we’re just Joe and Josephine Soap.

Will Phillip ‘get away with it’ too? Will the young man with whom he had the ‘unwise, but not illegal’ relationship ‘tell all’ to a newspaper for hundreds of thousands of pounds? We can’t possibly know, but I do wish that ITV, when appointing a new co-host to sit with Holly Willoughby on Britain’s most famous couch, would just remember one thing.

Giving any one individual the kind of power, freedom, honours and exaltation enjoyed by Jimmy Savile at the BBC and, to a lesser extent, Phillip Schofield at ITV, is a mistake. Putting any one person above others and letting him think he can get away with stuff that other mere mortals can’t, is wrong. Don’t let any one presenter become too comfortable, and let him or her know that, if they do bad shit, they will be held accountable.

We await developments with bated breath.