Phillip Schofield wants redemption and he wants to be loved again. Not just by his family and friends, not just by the television colleagues who deserted and dumped him as if he were a contagion, back in 2023. He wants to be loved by you, dear readers. All of you.
That is why the disgraced This Morning presenter is putting himself back on television in a make-or-break attempt not just to restore his reputation, but to bask once more in the hot glow that only being a popular celebrity can bring.
One can understand how addictive that must be. The adulation, the idolisation, the chummy veneration that he took as his due during an unrelenting three-decade reign on the small screen. Phil needs it. He wants to breathe that fire again.
So here he is, starring in a three-part soul-searching pilgrimage called Cast Away (C5) in which he has been abandoned on an island in the Indian Ocean for a whole ten days. As odysseys go it is much more Simpson than Homeric, but even in the trailers for the show, Phil is giving it his epic all.
‘I know what I did was unwise but is it enough to absolutely destroy someone?’ he whines, filming himself sitting by a campfire on the beach.
Phillip Schofield is putting himself back on television in an attempt to not just restore his reputation, but to bask once more in the hot glow that only being a popular celebrity can bring
Listen. People who are ‘absolutely’ destroyed are rarely given 180 minutes of prime-time by a major broadcaster over three consecutive days. A chunk of unchallenged airtime in which to exquisitely detail their suffering, like someone pegging out a tent of torment on their own personal campsite of despair. A show in which ‘I can say whatever I want about whatever I want. It is my chance to tell my side of my story.’
Schofield is dressing this up as some kind of heroic endeavour, but he is not exactly exposing himself to the likes of Emily Maitlis, if you will pardon the expression.
Perhaps the truth is that in the current pantheon of shamed men, in this sordid post-Huw and après-Prince Andrew world, the presenter saw this faint chance of salvation and grabbed it with both hands. It is utterly astonishing, something only a hard-boiled narcissist would ever dream of doing, so here we are.
And instead of accepting scrutiny and possible criticism, Schofield will instead be providing a meta-commentary on his own situation and critiquing his bad decisions. Marking his own homework, in other words. I can’t wait to hear how he justifies it all, or how many gold stars he awards himself.
To recap, as we must, Schofield came out as gay in 2020 and then separated from his wife of 27 years – the couple have two adult daughters together. In May 2023, amid mounting gossip and rumour, he admitted that while still with his wife he had carried on an extramarital affair with a much younger male co-worker.
He had lied about this affair to ITV‘s management, to his colleagues, to co-presenter Holly Willoughby, to his lawyers, his agents, to his friends and family but not least of all to the one million-plus viewers of This Morning. Onscreen and off, he was living a lie.
The former This Morning presenter is starring in a three-part soul-searching pilgrimage called Cast Away in which he has been abandoned on an island in the Indian Ocean for ten days
To make matters worse – so very much worse – he first met his lover when the boy was a 15-year-old drama student. Schofield later arranged a job interview for the boy at This Morning, where he was hired as a production assistant.
Dear God. The optics are utterly terrible, then and now.
It makes Schofield look like the head groom in a grooming salon for showbiz groomers, but he has always denied any grooming accusations and insisted that the sexual relationship only began when the co-worker was 20 years old and he himself was in his mid-50s.
If what he says is true, if we are to take him at his word, then Schofield has committed no crime except giving in to middle-aged lust and stupidity.
He won’t be the first or last celebrity to have indulged in an inappropriate relationship with a pulchritudinous younger colleague dazzled by their fame.
However, I’d feel a lot sorrier for Phillip Schofield if he didn’t feel quite so sorry for himself. Always convinced of his own virtue, Schofield said he believed homophobia was a factor in the coverage of the affair – look at him, still trying to blame others.
He stated his belief that if he’d had an affair with a young woman, it would not have created such a scandal. He was right and also wrong. It would have been much, much worse.
The star’s self-pitying remarks in this trailer for Cast Away are an echo of what he said to Amol Rajan, during their BBC television interview back in 2023. ‘Do you want me to die? Because that is where I am. I have lost everything,’ he said dramatically.
Yet here he is now, almost chipper, wandering on a sandy beach, growing some photogenic stubble, chin set in a determined jut. Poised on the edge of deliverance,
Schofield is neither evil nor innocent but, on first glance at least, trying and failing not to look aggrieved about his loss of popularity. Despite the fact he only has himself to blame for his own downfall.
Is it too much, too soon? Is being famous really all that matters to him? Perhaps this is the case, otherwise he would be at home quietly atoning for his sins instead of thrusting himself into the limelight and cosplaying Robinson Crusoe on this self-filmed odyssey of bleating nonsense.
He would be thinking about his mother, who has seen one famous son implode on the public stage and another son recently jailed for 12 years for sexually abusing a child over a three-year period.
He would be thinking about the young man at the centre of this drama, who just wanted to get on with his life, but is now thrust back into the headlines, which must be the last thing he wants.
Yet Phillip Schofield can only think about himself, which is how he got himself into this mess in the first place. So while he is ready to make a big comeback, are the public ready for him? We will find out soon enough.
How does Kate look so great?
Kate Moss was at Paris Fashion Week, looking sensational, as always. She was also looking very refreshed, as they say in the business of show.
Well, as refreshed as any millionairess seemingly with Dr Tweakment and Professor Pin Tuck on her speed-dial can and should look. Friends, I hate to pry, but has Kate had some work done?
At the age of 50 she is, like a pine cabinet in need of an upcycle, in prime refresh territory. And her glowing appearance this week is proof of my pet theory that there is no point in having a face lift – or similar! – unless you are beautiful to start with.
Right now, Missy Mossy appears to be in the cosmetic sweet spot, post-procedure but pre-Nicole Kidman. Doesn’t she look great?
Kate Moss, 50, at Paris Fashion Week, on Tuesday
Don’t pass me the posh sauce
Brooklyn Beckham has launched his special secret hot sauce, an upmarket bottle of chilli-fused fire called Cloud 23.
‘It’s my favourite number,’ the dork told Bon Appetit magazine.
The 25-year-old nepo-entrepreneur started experimenting with making sauces when he was drunk in the kitchen with his wife. It ‘stunk out the house’ and burnt their eyes, apparently. ‘Such a laugh’ he said.
This is the first product (£27 for two bottles) in what Brooklyn promises will be a ‘luxury line of condiments’ – which makes one wonder how posh sauce can be. Answer: not very.
The brand already has ‘millions of dollars in backing’. But who is going to buy it just because Brooklyn – a man who can barely bring his fork to his mouth without falling over – supposedly invented it?
Like the purpose of the third condiment shaker in a cruet set, it is one of the mysteries of the modern world.
Brooklyn Beckham, 25, has launched his special secret hot sauce, an upmarket bottle of chilli-fused fire called Cloud 23
This is the first product (£27 for two bottles) in what Brooklyn promises will be a ‘luxury line of condiments’, which makes one wonder how posh sauce can be
Some people give charity a bad name, and Naomi Campbell is one of them. The supermodel has been banned from being a charity trustee for five years after an investigation unearthed financial misconduct at the poverty relief charity she founded in 2005 and has fronted ever since.
Fashion For Relief claims to have raised more than £13 million and helped victims of Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans that same year, children affected by Covid and many other worthy causes around the world. Yet it has been discovered that the charity only passed on a fraction of the millions it raised. The rest went on hotels, spas treatments, personal security – and even on Naomi’s cigarettes.
I wish I was more shocked by this than I am. Naomi Campbell should hang her head in shame. How appalling that this happened under her watch. It serves as another reminder to all of us to be very, very careful about the charities we choose to support.
Naomi Campbell has been banned from being a charity trustee for five years after an investigation unearthed financial misconduct at the poverty relief charity she founded
Was this a ghoulish PR stunt, Meghan?
The Duchess of Sussex is reeling once more from accusations of being a bad boss and the kind of office dictator who ‘reduces grown men to tears’.
In a damage limitation exercise aimed at negating these claims, former Archewell president Mandana Dayani informed US Weekly magazine that this was not the Meghan she knew, no way.
She told the publication of how she had personally accompanied the Duchess on her self-imposed mission to Uvalde, Texas in 2022, following the tragic school shooting in which 21 people were killed and 17 injured.
‘For hours, Meghan sat in a room with grieving families, going one by one to each person – hugging them and crying with them,’ Dayani told the magazine, adding that Meghan had since kept in touch with the families affected by the tragedy. Was this all said for no other reason than to burnish the Duchess’s tarnished image?
If so, how absolutely disgusting. That the suffering of these bereaved parents, the heartbreak of these dead children and their teachers, that the ongoing ripples of these wrecked lives might be summoned up as part of a cheap PR exercise would be reprehensible and wrong.
Is there no tragedy on earth that these PR performative ghouls won’t use for their own ends? They make me sick.
No matter how successful, adored and famous a pop star becomes, there will always be a grump in the corner moaning that they can’t see what all the fuss is about. Usually that grump is me, but not when it comes to Taylor Swift. I love Taylor’s songs and her admirable, demented work ethic, which crested this month with the release of two new albums — The Tortured Poets Department and The Anthology — both written, recorded and made while she is in the middle of her worldwide Eras tour, performing on stage for three straight hours at every show.
