But none of those people have yet to say so publicly.īut the bullying claims are neither here nor there. He insisted that his friends did not recognise that portrayal and had contacted him to say, “I loved working with you”. Schofield may be a broken man, but he hasn’t lost all of his pride. He cut a pathetic figure but it was noticeable that his voice became stronger, and his manner more forceful when confronting allegations of bullying and toxic behaviour on the set of This Morning. He has been painted as a monster and wants to put the record straight. It felt as if the true purpose of the interview was to tell people, as Schofield did in the opening minutes, that “you come to a point where you just think, ‘How much are you supposed to take?’ All those people who write all of that stuff, do they ever think that there’s actually a person at the other end?” Meaning: himself. But the former lover has attracted nothing but sympathy and no one has accused him of wrongdoing. Schofield said he was speaking out because the young man with whom he had his affair is “an innocent person who is vulnerable and didn’t do anything wrong”. It’s hard to call it reputational management when the man arguably has no reputation left to salvage. So why do this at all? Presumably, Schofield’s advisers told him that it would be a good idea to do the interview and a companion piece in The Sun.

There were no tears, which somehow made the interview more alarming. Schofield told Amol Rajan that the love of his daughters was the only thing that has saved him from suicide. This was not Prince Andrew and Emily Maitlis on Newsnight, an encounter so disastrous that it strayed into the comical. What miserable viewing, to watch a man who has lost everything and knows he only has himself to blame. In Phillip Schofield: The Interview, it was his turn to deliver a wretched mea culpa.

Daytime television is home to the confessional interview, but Phillip Schofield is usually the one asking the questions.

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