In what feels like the blink of an eye, Phillip Schofield is heading back to our primetime screens.
He never was a casualty of cancel culture – this was a spectacular career collapse sparked by a serious HR violation, an abuse of power and a betrayal of his inner circle, not to mention millions of viewers who saw one man and realised he was another. “I have brought myself down. I am done. I have to talk about television in the past tense, which breaks my heart,” he said then. But that was then.
Now, 16 months later, here he is, a contemporary Lazarus, gearing up for a comeback as if nothing had ever happened. In the fame business, it seems that even the most spectacular falls from grace have a reset button.
After last year’s debacle involving a tawdry affair with a much younger colleague on ITV’s This Morning, Phillip Schofield, the TV veteran, is somehow clawing his way back into the limelight.
This time he’s washed up – both figuratively and literally – on a desert island in a three-part Channel 5 special, Phillip Schofield: Cast Away. Note the narrative: here he is as an embattled survivor.
It is a very modern form of public therapy in which a disgraced star seeks redemption through the absurd theatre of manufactured reality. But in this chaotic ecosystem – of TV, of public opinion, of social media – the gambit might just pay off.
Let me tell you, from what I know of PR and strategic communications, what’s going on here.
The first trick is the apparently confessional format of the show. The solitude allows Schofield to tell his side of the story that dethroned him without dissenting voices interrupting. Then there is the setting that unsubtly symbolises both humility and victimhood – all clearly designed to propel Schofield into a redemption arc.
He went quiet for a time after the scandal hit. That, too, was strategic. These days, the public’s attention span is about as long as a TikTok clip, and the news cycle is just as fleeting. A full 80% of online news stories hit their peak within 20 hours, meaning that we collectively forget them faster than we scroll past useless ads. Borkowski research confirms that even a major scandal only holds our fragile interest for two weeks, tops.
This collective short-term memory loss is the perfect breeding ground for long-term amnesia. In that negative space, fractured reputations are painstakingly rebuilt and disgraced characters miraculously rebrand themselves – as if we wouldn’t remember the trainwreck they caused last Tuesday.
Can it go wrong? Of course it can. Consider the version of this strategy being conducted in parallel in the US with fellow cancellee Ellen DeGeneres, who lost her primetime show amid internal bullying allegations at odds with her much-loved catchphrase to viewers (“Be kind”). Her comeback vehicle, a widely derided standup Netflix special For Your Approval, should act as a cautionary tale for Schofield. She, too, picked a format she could control and in which she was the only voice – a platform on which she could give her side of the story unchallenged, and one on which she could paint herself as the “real” victim in her cancellation.
But she’s been panned. “No apologies and not particularly funny: Ellen DeGeneres’s shameless return to standup,” was the Guardian verdict. DeGeneres’s comeback vehicle appears to have lacked the necessary subtlety and balance to rehabilitate her public image. She compares her experience of being cancelled with the ostracism she experienced when coming out as gay in 1997. Gun, foot, bang.
Schofield must avoid these pitfalls. But however well pitched his comeback strategy, Cast Away is almost certainly going to be a success for Channel 5, whose decision to platform Schofield has thrust it into a spotlight that generally eludes the minnow of UK terrestrial television. Also worth noting: its achievement in preventing the show’s existence from being scooped by a tabloid until just days before broadcast, when the publicity suits it.
We are a harsh, judgmental culture, and yet we enjoy a redemption story. The headlines generated by the mere prospect of Schofield’s onscreen return demonstrate that we are on some level still fascinated by the character even while recognising his wrongdoing and his trajectory. He’s got our attention instantly; his challenge now is to maintain it without sustaining further damage to his already battered reputation.
If Cast Away is to launch him out of showbusiness purgatory, Schofield must put in the performance of a lifetime. The programme will need to feel raw and authentic.
Facing a morbidly curious but largely unsympathetic public, Schofield must walk a tightrope of humility, contrition, grace, thick skin and self-awareness, while also reminding us of the prodigious camera presence that made him a star in the first place.
No tantrums, no indignation at his downfall, no navel-gazing. He must be sincere or at least construct a sincerity – and then keep his fingers crossed.
Mark Borkowski is a crisis PR consultant and author
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