30 September 2024, 20:04
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Channel 5
Axed This Morning presenter Phillip Schofield has hit out at his brother, blaming him for his departure from ITV.
Schofield, who on Monday made a shock return to British television, has claimed he was “fired for someone else’s crime.”
Called Cast Away, the show sees the 62-year-old sent to a tropical island for 10 days where he opens up about two years which have left his career on the brink.
In the final episode of Channel 5’s Phillip Schofield: Cast Away, he revealed he would “never in a million years” decide to return to daytime TV.
He was forced to resign from This Morning after it emerged he had an affair with a much younger man.
Schofield went on to say he had always been “open and honest with everyone at work about what was happening” with his brother Timothy.
His 54-year-old brother was convicted in April 2023 of 11 sexual offences involving a child between October 2016 and October 2019, including two of sexual activity with a child.
Schofield says he refused “to name and refused to acknowledge” his disgraced brother, claiming he had “absolutely no qualms whatsoever in shopping” to police, who he said had “praised” him for getting “justice done”.
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Alamy
The Oldham-born TV personality continues: “Even though they knew all of the facts the papers painted me out to be some sort of complicit agent.
“That was when my world started to collapse. My poor mum, had to tell her about that member of the family. To break that to your mother is tough.
“And I had to go through everything with the hierarchy at ITV. The full entire story so that they knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. The full story.
“Everything came to a head the day before he was sentenced when my agent called.
“My phone rang and I picked it up, ‘mate, are you somewhere quiet’ which is never a good sign,’I’ve got a bit of a shock, I’m afraid you’ve been let go from This Morning’. What? ‘Yeah that’s it, it’s done. You’re not going back on Monday’.
“What? because of what? ‘Think it’s the publicity, mate’, that’s got nothing to do with me, that has nothing to do with me.
“Why would I be sacked for something someone else did? I’ve just been fired because of him. Because I was becoming more of a story than the programme.
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Channel 5
“It was better for the show, better for the channel. And I agreed to say that I’d resigned because it would be neater for everybody.
“I was always open and honest with everyone at work about what was happening with my brother. I was fired for the bad publicity, for someone else’s crime.
“And the thing is about a week later, I blew my own wheels off with everything else (his affair), because I thought the only way to even begin to put this right for everybody is to do a full mea culpa.”
Schofield strongly denies allegations of grooming.
Speaking in the first episode of the Channel 5 show, Schofield revealed that he had “everything in place” for a suicide attempt but his daughter brought him back from “the edge”.
Schofield said: “In the last eighteen months, it got as dark as it is possible to get.
“A year ago I got so, so close. I had everything in place, everything was set up and everything was ready and it was Molly that was looking after me.”
Picture:
Alamy
Schofield goes on to say that the only reason he is still alive is because his 31-year-old daughter, Molly, talked him down from “the edge”.
He explains that she said: “Can you imagine what it would do to me if you did this on my watch?”
“That was just enough to take a step back from the edge,” he said.
“And I could have been hospitalised… But then I thought, ‘That is going to get out.’
“So I just raced to the family home and shut the gates.”