Phillip Schofield ‘afraid to leave the house’ amid fallout from secret affair

In a new interview with The Sun he said he feared being spat on in the street and that he was currently getting by “hour by hour”.

The former This Morning presenter, 61, previously said he had “lost everything” after admitting to the affair, and that the fallout had had a “catastrophic effect” on his mind.

In a new interview, published on Friday, he told The Sun: “I do not know a time I will be able to walk out of the door.

“I don’t have any spirit. My friends tell me, ‘It will get better’. It won’t. Not now. Not this one.”

He added: “I am getting by hour by hour. I have got my girls and my friends.”

Schofield resigned from ITV last week and was dropped by his talent agency YMU after admitting to the “unwise but not illegal” relationship.

In his first interviews since leaving the broadcaster and This Morning, he said he was “utterly broken and ashamed” but denied he had “groomed” the man.

Speaking to the BBC’s Amol Rajan, Schofield praised his daughters Ruby and Molly for “guarding him”.

“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,” he said.

“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?”

Referring to the Love Island host who took her own life in February 2020, he added: “I think I understand how Caroline Flack felt.

He said he saw “nothing ahead” of him and he had to talk about his career in television “in the past tense”.

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.”

Flack’s mother, Christine Flack, told the BBC’s Newsnight programme that Schofield was now “realising even more” what her daughter went through before her death.

Ms Flack said she hoped he had “done the right thing” by admitting to his secret affair with the man, and that they should have been “looked after” by ITV.

In his BBC interview Schofield 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 told the BBC that the first time he had any “kind of sexual contact” with his former This Morning colleague, the younger man was 20, though he had first met him when he was 15.

He said he had followed the man on Twitter, and had talked to him about jobs and careers, but there had never been “any whiff of impropriety”.

Schofield said they had last spoken when Schofield “engaged a lawyer for him”, adding: “He needed independent support. So that was the last time.”

During the interview, Schofield also spoke about his friend and This Morning co-presenter Holly Willoughby, with reports in the weeks before he stepped down saying they had drifted apart.

Asked who on the team knew about the relationship, Schofield said: “To my knowledge, I mean, somebody has to know something for there to be a rumour later on. I didn’t believe that anybody knew.”

He said he had not told Willoughby of the relationship, saying: “No, God, no. That’s a bigger question. Because we have, our make-up room was like a sanctuary, has always been a sanctuary.

“So you tell everything in that room. Holly knows everything about me. I know everything about Holly, Holly did not know. Nobody knew.”

They 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 previously said he was sorry to his “TV sister” Willoughby, but owed his “greatest apology” to the man.

In a sign he believes his television career is over, he told the BBC: “I see nothing ahead of me but blackness and sadness and regret and remorse and guilt.”

He said: “I’m not in television any more, I don’t know what I am even remotely – if I get through this.

“I don’t know even remotely how I move forward – what am I going to do with my days?”

ITV boss Dame Carolyn McCall has been called to a parliamentary committee on June 14 to answer questions about the broadcaster’s approach to safeguarding and complaint handling following Schofield’s exit.

In a letter seen by the PA news agency on Wednesday, the chief executive said the broadcaster had instructed barrister Jane Mulcahy KC of Blackstone Chambers to carry out an external review of the facts.

It also said the broadcaster had “reviewed” its records and said “when rumours of a relationship” between Schofield and an employee of ITV emerged, they “both categorically and repeatedly denied the rumours”.