Phillip Schofield asked 'do you want me to die?' in an interview following the revelation of his affair with a younger male ITV colleague.
The former This Morning presenter resigned from ITV last week and was dropped by his talent agency YMU after admitting to an 'unwise but not illegal' relationship. He said he has since 'lost everything' and said it has had a 'catastrophic effect' on his mind.
The 61-year-old said the fallout from the revelations had been 'relentless' and urged the media to leave his former lover 'alone now'. Speaking to the BBC’s Amol Rajan in an interview released on Friday morning, he spoke of the criticism he has faced since admitting the affair, saying: “Do you want me to die? Because that’s where I am.”
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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 “I think I understand how Caroline Flack felt”. 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.
He 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?”.
Schofield also urged the media to leave his former lover alone. "There is an innocent person here who didn’t do anything wrong, who is vulnerable and probably feels like I do,” he said.
“And I just have to say stop with him, ok with me, but stop with him. Leave him alone now.”
Schofield was also 'emphatic' in his denial over allegations that he had groomed the man. Yesterday, he told The Sun: “I did not (groom him).
"There are accusations of all sorts of things. It never came across that way (an abuse of power) because we’d become mates. I don’t know about that."
And 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’.”
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.
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