Phillip Schofield is returning to television 16 months after quitting This Morning over what he called an “unwise, but not illegal” affair.
The 62-year-old, who stepped down from presenting the ITV daytime show in May 2023 after 21 years, will appear in a Channel 5 special called Cast Away, which follows a celebrity stranded on an island off the coast of Madagascar for nearly two weeks.
Schofield teased a story on Instagram on Tuesday about his return to television, saying “watch this space … 9am”. He is said to have turned down “lucrative offers” from ITV and the BBC for the Channel 5 role, according to the Sun, who first published allegations of the affair in 2019.
Over the weekend, Channel 5 posted a short clip of a mystery star, said to be Schofield, walking across a remote beach, as it teased the desert island programme on social media.
“A celebrity marooned on an uninhabited tropical island off the coast of Madagascar for 10 days is challenged with total isolation, the forces of nature, and the battle within their own mind,” the video was captioned.
Schofield’s This Morning co-host Holly Willoughby left the show almost five months after his departure, and after 14 years presenting the daytime show with him. She has continued to front ITV’s Dancing On Ice, with Stephen Mulhern replacing Schofield as co-host.
In June 2023, ITV launched an independent KC-led investigation into the scandal to examine how the company had dealt with rumours relating to the relationship between Schofield and a This Morning runner, complaints by staff and whether ITV’s response was adequate.
Jane Mulcahy KC, who interviewed 48 people for the review, said Schofield had “reluctantly declined” to take part because of health risks, and found the presenter’s “patronage” of a younger male colleague he was having an affair with clearly assisted the man’s early career at ITV before he then “made his way on his own”.
Mulcahy found that neither ITV management nor This Morning’s senior staff knew about the affair until Schofield’s statement, and which the younger employee had not reported.
In an interview with the BBC in June 2023, after reports of the affair with the colleague while married to his wife of 30 years, Stephanie Lowe, came to light, Schofield said: “I have brought myself down. I am done. I have to talk about television in the past tense, which breaks my heart.”
When asked then what he would like to say to the man he had the affair with, Schofield said: “I’d say to everyone that I lied to, I am desperately sorry, but principally I’d like to apologise to him. I have caused you so much pain and I’ll never forgive myself.”