Phillip Schofield sent a text message to his This Morning co-star Holly Willoughby after news of his affair with a 'younger' ITV colleague broke last week. In an interview with The Sun, the 61-year-old revealed the exact words he sent to his former friend, which was the last contact he had with her.
Phillip resigned from ITV last week and was dropped by his talent agency YMU after admitting to an “unwise but not illegal” relationship with an ITV colleague. In his first interviews since leaving the broadcaster and This Morning, he said he was “utterly broken and ashamed” but that he had not “groomed” the man in question.
Opening up about his friendship with Holly, which is now over, Phillip said that he received no reply from her after he sent his final message. “The last time we had a conversation was when I texted Holly and said, ‘Don’t reply’ – this was after the statement last week – ‘Don’t reply, you’re probably not allowed to, but I am deeply deeply sorry that I lied to you,'" he told The Sun.
READ MORE: Alison Hammond in tears on This Morning over Phillip Schofield interview
He added: "And I am. It was the one secret in our sanctuary that was never mentioned.” Phillip revealed that he had lost his "best friend" following the breakdown of his relationship with Holly. "I let her down. I let that entire show down. I let the viewers down," he said.
He claimed that Holly "did not know" about the affair, which is why he text her to apologise after issuing his statement about it. "She was one of the first texts that I sent, to say, ‘I am so, so sorry that I lied to you’," he said in the interview. "She didn’t reply and I understand why she didn’t reply, as well. So yeah. If anyone is in any way linking Holly to this; that is absolutely, wholly untrue.”
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.
Phillip also said his friendship with Holly did not break down following their visit to the late Queen’s lying-in-state - but after his brother, Timothy, was jailed for 12 years for sexually abusing a boy.
Speaking about the accusations of queue jumping, he told The Sun: “So we are forever now (associated)… it doesn’t matter now because I’m not going to go out any more but, forever now, you go to the butcher’s and someone says, ‘Oh do you want to (skip ahead)?’ ‘No, no, I’ll stand here.’ I’m serious. I don’t ever throw anyone under the bus, but I have a very good instinct for these things and I knew it was a bad thing to do.”
He added: “We were texting each other backwards and forwards afterwards. I said to Holly, ‘I knew I should have gone with my gut,’ and she said, ‘I know’. But we were shell-shocked, the both of us, completely shell-shocked by the reaction."
Phillip claimed he was not a victim of the situation around his hidden affair, but told the BBC: “I feel a victim of hate after the event, and I think there will probably be a lot of people watching this now thinking, ‘how dare you?’
“It would be easier for me to say I don’t feel like a victim. What I feel a victim of is spun areas of non-factual information and gossip and nastiness. But I don’t look any more.”
READ NEXT:
