Phillip Schofield has explained how his affair with a former colleague actually began (Picture: REX)
Phillip Schofield has explained how his affair with the young male colleague at This Morning began.
He sat down for a tell-all interview after confessing to an affair with a much younger showrunner on the ITV daytime show.
The affair took place while he was still married to wife Stephanie Lowe and before he came out as gay on live TV in 2020.
He has now said that the affair began in 2017 after a ‘consensual moment’ in his dressing room.
Speaking with The Sun, Schofield – who said he is ‘broken and ashamed’ by the fallout of his admission, insisted: ‘It was not a love affair, it was not a relationship, we were not boyfriends; we were mates.
‘It wasn’t feelings (I was getting), it was more like mates: excitement.’
He said they had a ‘consensual moment’ in his dressing room in 2017 (Picture: ITV)
The former Dancing On Ice presenter said he was struggling with his sexuality at the time.
He believes that he and the runner – who has not been named publicly for privacy reasons – were together ‘maybe five or six times’.
‘We just didn’t think anyone knew,’ he added.
‘There was no lying, we thought, stupidly, that nobody knew.’
Schofield went on to say that his interactions with the runner before he joined This Morning were ‘completely innocent’, after they met when the young man was a teenager.
He told BBC News: ‘It was a totally innocent picture, a totally innocent Twitter follow, of which I follow 11,400 people, and then it was a completely innocent backwards and forwards over a period of time about a job, about careers.
The affair happened while Schofield was married and before he came out as gay (Picture: Dave J Hogan/Getty Images)
‘What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with talking to someone no matter what age they are?
‘Does that mean that if you’re following anyone on Twitter that you absolutely don’t talk to anybody else or you don’t give advice?’
He added: ‘The brief communications backward and forwards up to the point that he came to work on This Morning I think was just chat.
‘What was unwise was the fact that it happened. And that was a very, very grave error, it was consensual, but it was my fault.’
Phillip Schofield statement in full
‘I am making this statement via the Daily Mail to whom I have already apologised personally for misleading, through my lawyer who I also misled, about a story which they wanted to write about me a few days ago.
‘The first thing I want to say is: I am deeply sorry for having lied to them, and to many others about a relationship that I had with someone working on This Morning. I did have a consensual on-off relationship with a younger male colleague at This Morning.
‘Contrary to speculation, whilst I met the man when he was a teenager and was asked to help him to get into television, it was only after he started to work on the show that it became more than just a friendship. That relationship was unwise, but not illegal. It is now over.
‘When I chose to come out I did so entirely for my own wellbeing. Nobody “forced” me out. Neither I nor anyone else, to my knowledge, has ever issued an injunction, super or otherwise, about my relationship with this colleague, he was never moved on or sacked by or because of me. In an effort to protect my ex-colleague I haven’t been truthful about the relationship.
‘But my recent, unrelated, departure from This Morning fuelled speculation and raised questions which have been impacting him, so for his sake it is important for me to be honest now.
‘I am painfully conscious that I have lied to my employers at ITV, to my colleagues and friends, to my agents, to the media and therefore the public and most importantly of all to my family. I am so very, very sorry, as I am for having been unfaithful to my wife.
‘I have therefore decided to step down from the British Soap Awards, my last public commitment, and am resigning from ITV with immediate effect expressing my immense gratitude to them for all the amazing opportunities that they have given me.
‘I will reflect on my very bad judgment in both participating in the relationship and then lying about it. To protect his privacy, I am not naming this individual and my deepest wish is that both he and his family can now move on with their lives free from further intrusion, and that this statement will enable them to do so.
‘I ask the media now to respect their privacy. They have done nothing wrong, and I ask that their privacy should be respected.’
They were together ‘five or six times’.