The former This Morning presenter said he was “utterly broken and ashamed” over the dalliance he had with the younger man, but insistedthat he “did not” groom him.
The 61-year-old resigned from ITV last week after 21 years fronting the daytime show and was dropped by his talent agency YMU after admitting to an “unwise but not illegal” relationship, in one of the most dramatic downfalls from stardom.
In an interview with the BBC released on Friday, he said he had “lost everything” amid the backlash to the affair and his “career is over”, adding: “Do you want me to die? Because that’s where I am.”
Visibly emotional, he told the BBC’s Amol Rajan: “I think I understand how Caroline Flack felt. Last week, if my daughters hadn’t been there, then I wouldn’t be here.
“They’ve guarded me and won’t let me out of their sight. It’s like a weird numbness. I know that’s a selfish point of view, but you come to a point where you think, how much are you supposed to take?
“All of those people who write all of that stuff, do they ever think that there’s actually a person at the other end?”
He also revealed that he last messaged his longtime presenting partner Holly Willoughby as the scandal emerged in recent weeks, but she has not replied.
He said he told her in a WhatsApp message: “I know you can’t reply, you’re probably not allowed to, but please know that I am desperately, desperately sorry.”
Phillip Schofield during an interview with BBC’s Amol Rajan. Photo / BBC
Affair began in dressing room
During a second filmed interview with the Sun, Schofield clutched a vape and inhaled it slowly at one point, his hands shaking.
He said he had been “vaping a lot” and drinking Southern Comfort whiskey liqueur to cope with the backlash, telling the newspaper: “I just sit on the sofa and stare. I realise by doing that, I’ve blistered both hands.”
In the BBC interview, Schofield said he first met the boy aged 15 after being invited to a drama school and was asked to follow the “fan” back on Twitter, to which he agreed, before letting him come to the studio to look around when the fan was aged 19.
He said no sexual relations started until age 20 and when asked by the BBC if he had any sex with him while he was underage, he said: “No, God no.”
Schofield said the affair began in a dressing room at ITV in 2017 and he “didn’t believe that anybody knew”, including Willoughby who he said he did not tell. He said he understood people who thought there had been an abuse of power, but said it “didn’t feel like that at the time”.
Schofield said he last spoke to his former lover a couple of weeks ago to hire lawyers for him, which he is still paying for.
He pleaded with the public to “stop” focusing on his former lover and “leave him alone now” as “there is an innocent person here who didn’t do anything wrong, who is vulnerable and probably feels like I do”.
Asked by the BBC why the affair is only coming out now, Schofield said: “The lie got too big for both of us, it just got enormous.”
He said the relationship was a “grave error” and he would “regret it forever”, but suggested homophobia was a factor in people who disapproved of their relationship, adding: “If it was male-female then it wouldn’t be such a scandal”.
He denied there had ever been a non-disclosure agreement preventing the young man from speaking out nor had there been an injunction preventing media coverage.
Referring to the ITV investigation in late 2019 and early 2020 when the rumours first emerged, Schofield said “it wasn’t formal” but that “if you have two people who are lying, what can you do”.
It comes as Schofield’s London flat, in which he allegedly conducted an affair with his ITV colleague, has apparently been put up for sale as brands he had partnered with have distanced themselves from him.
ITV last week hired a barrister to carry out an external review of the facts following his departure from This Morning and chief executive Dame Carolyn McCall will be grilled by MPs in Parliament later this month.
