A few weeks ago this would’ve been a completely middle-of-the-road, bland opinion – now it’s apparently one of the most controversial imaginable. I feel sorry for Phillip Schofield.
To be absolutely clear: what he did was wrong. He had an affair, behind his wife’s back, with a young, impressionable colleague, most likely dazzled by his fame and influence, and employed on his TV show.
Then he lied about it, to everyone, for years. In this post #MeToo era, of course relationships with power imbalances like this are simply unacceptable, never mind the rest. When your best defence is pointing out that your actions were “unwise but not illegal” it’s obvious that you’ve messed up big time.
But no-one is entirely good or bad, life isn’t that easy.
Schofield has revealed that if it wasn’t for his two daughters not letting him out of their sight, he wouldn’t be here any more.
“I am deeply sorry… I should have known better. I should have acted the way I have always acted. I should not have done it. I’m sorry. And I will forever be sorry. I will die sorry. I am so deeply mortified,” he sobbed a few days ago.
What more do we want? The blood he says he would have shed if not for his children working around the clock to keep him alive? If Schofield is now confessing absolutely all the dark secrets he tried so desperately to conceal, should we not be showing him a bit of compassion? This man has genuinely lost everything. The job that defined him, in the only industry he’s ever known. Presumably far more friends than just Holly Willoughby. The support of a loyal, loving wife who stood by his side through more than anyone could have expected.
Overnight he’s gone from having a jam-packed schedule full of glamorous, exciting events to an endlessly empty diary. From advertising messiah to absolute pariah.
He’ll never work in this – or any – town again. Yes, he’s probably not going to have to worry about making ends meet, but what reason does he have to get up in the morning?
It’s also impossible not to notice that many of the people gleefully revelling in Schofield’s downfall – like Eamonn Holmes and Carol McGiffin – are presenters who used to be employed by ITV but no longer are. Utterly unbiased, with no skin in the game at all then. They’re also profiting from Schofield’s demolition by being paid to crucify and re-crucify him repeatedly on GB News, a channel with a business model built on narrow-minded rent-a gobs spouting hate in perfect 30 second sound bites that can go viral on social media.
The other elephant in this room is that the pile on around Phillip definitely has an unpleasant whiff of homophobia. Older men have been in relationships (mostly horizontal ones) with much younger women for ever, mostly without comment never mind outrage. Bill Wyman was 47 when he met Mandy Smith, age 13. Leonardo DiCaprio is 48 and the fact he doesn’t date anyone over the age of 25 is a long-running “joke”. Al Pacino, 83, announced this week that he’s having a baby with a woman of 29. But all anyone says about that is ‘there’s life in the old dog yet ho ho ho’.
Phillip Schofield never claimed to be perfect. He’s been called an egomaniac, and being very famous, surrounded by enablers and yes people indulging your every whim hardly ever makes anyone nicer or kinder.
But this is a human being. As fallible and flawed as the next man or woman. He made a mistake, and has paid a high price. He could not have learned his lesson in a more public, humbling way. He is clearly suffering, the pain he’s in visible on his tired, pale, wan face.
As Alison Hammond said on Friday’s This morning, “Let he without sin cast the first stone.”
Enough now. Enough.
