Featured Image Credit: ITV
Topics: Phillip Schofield, This Morning, TV and Film, ITV, UK News
Callum Jones
Phillip Schofield has admitted that his affair with a younger ITV male colleague was 'unwise but not illegal'.
The 61-year-old announced he had left This Morning last Saturday (20 May), following an apparent feud with his co-host Holly Willoughby.
But since then, Schofield has hardly left the newspaper headlines, with that now set to continue thanks to his latest admission.
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The former This Morning presenter has admitted to having an affair with a younger colleague on the show while he was still with his wife Stephanie Lowe, and before he came out as gay in 2020.
In a statement exclusively provided to the Daily Mail, Schofield said: "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."
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Schofield went on to say the relationship with the young colleague was 'unwise', before adding the romance is over and that he did nothing illegal.
The statement to the Daily Mail continued: "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."
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The TV presenter added that he has also stepped down from hosting the British Soap awards next month, as well as leaving ITV with immediate effect.
LADbible has attempted to contact representatives of Schofield for comment.