'I save celeb careers for a living - Holly Willoughby made a terrible mistake in Schofield scandal'

Phillip Schofield's admission of an affair with a colleague and subsequent axing from ITV's This Morning sent shockwaves among viewers - and a PR expert argues pal Holly Willoughby's handling of the matter only made things worse

Phillip Schofield's cutting comments in his return to TV with Cast Away have brought his ITV scandal back into the spotlight.

Appearing in the Channel 5 show which aired last week, Phil didn't hold back from being vocal about his former colleagues at This Morning as he reflected on his treatment at the time of his axing. The former presenter admitted to an 'unwise but not illegal' affair with a younger male colleague who worked on the production, which saw him immediately pulled from screens.

His 'TV sister' Holly Willoughby responded to the news by distancing herself from Phil, whom she had worked alongside for 13 years on the popular daytime show. She revealed she had been 'let down' by his admission, and had been 'lied to'. And now a PR expert argues her 'knee-jerk panicked' reaction was a huge 'mistake' for the much-loved telly star.

The Mirror revealed this week that Schofield accused Holly of not coming to his aid as his career crashed, telling her: "You brought me down." The 62-year-old dramatically blasted Holly, 43, via Whatsapp the day before news of his This Morning axe became public.

A pal said: "As well as saying she had brought him down, he said he couldn't believe his TV sister would do this to him." Schofield blamed her for not publicly backing him amid reports they had fallen out in the aftermath of his brother's court case in May 2023.

In the hope of diffusing media claims of a fallout between the best pals, Phil asked her for a public show of support, such as a statement or picture of them together, but his plea was ignored.

When Phil's affair came to light, Holly released a statement saying: "It's taken time to process yesterday's news. When reports of this relationship first surfaced, I asked Phil directly if this was true and was told it was not. It's been very hurtful to find out that was a lie. Holly."

PR crisis and media expert Edward Coram-James, of Go-Up, says a better communication strategy for everyone involved would have been for Holly to have released a more straightforward message. "Something along the lines of: 'this is a matter between ITV, Schofield, his wife and the other gentleman in the affair. It would not be appropriate for me to get involved or to comment further,'" he advised.

"This would have created enough distance between herself and the events to preserve her own reputation. It also would have helped deescalate the story, and could have helped put it to bed in a way that meant This Morning would not be thrown into crisis, and neither she nor Schofield would have to leave. But, she didn't."

After a brief absence, Holly returned to the show with her hand held by co-star Josie Gibson. Speaking directly into the camera, she began: "I imagine you might have been feeling like I have, worried, shaken, troubled, let down and full of questions. You, me and everyone here put our trust in someone who was not telling the truth, who acted in a way that they themselves felt that they had to resign from ITV and step down from a career that they loved."

She continued: "That is a lot to process. It's equally hard to see the toll it's taken on their own mental health. I think what unites us all now is a desire to heal for the health and well-being of everyone. I hope that as we start this new chapter and get back to a place of warmth and magic that the show holds for all of us, we can find strength in each other. From my heart, thank you for all of your kind messages."

In his area of work, Edward says any unfolding incidents should be ranked out of 10 before justifying the scale of public response. If a crisis is 5/10 on the severity scale, then it warrants a 5/10 response, but if PRs respond with a 3/10, then the client runs the risk of avoiding accountability. But it works both ways in that if a celebrity and their team respond to the same allegation with a 7/10, then it encourages the public to view the incident as a bigger deal than it is.

Edward claims that her statements escalated the crisis from a 4/10 issue to a 9/10 rating - which he says is a disaster in the world of reputational management. "How we react to a problem in terms of our public communications is often the difference between escalation and de-escalation - the difference between a problem remaining a problem or morphing into an uncontrollable crisis," he explained.

"It can lend credibility to the idea that the problem is worse than it is and a snowball effect takes place. Willoughby quite literally at that moment had Schofield's career in her hands. And she chose self-preservation. But to be fair to Holly, hers is a common mistake. It does not make her a bad or divisive person."

Edward argues that Holly was misadvised by her team around her, and panicked with how to move forward. "I have little doubt that, in retrospect, there are many things that she would choose to do differently and that she would never have intended for Schofield to be on the receiving end of the kind of trial-by-media-obliteration that he ended up receiving," he argued.

"This will go down in crisis comms folklore as a case study of what happens when a good person panics, follows poor advice and makes huge PR mistakes. Had she followed a well-considered crisis strategy, I believe there is a decent chance this whole thing could have been contained. Panic breeds panic and, in many ways quite understandably, Holly panicked, with the entire problem blowing up."

Schofield said in May 2023 he had "agreed to step down" from the show after more than 20 years in order to "protect the show that I love." However a friend told the Mirror: "In reality he was forced out…and was absolutely devastated by what happened."

The pal said: "He blew things up himself but at the end of the day he promised the other person involved that he wouldn’t say anything in order to keep his name out of the papers, which is what they wanted. The suggestion by ITV that the lying ultimately got him sacked is disingenuous. He was very much forced out at This Morning. This was not a voluntary stepping down, and he made his feelings clear."

Last week he appeared on Channel 5 show Castaway to "set the record straight on a few things," the pal says. He told on air how the building "became hostile to me" and appeared to take a well-aimed dig at colleagues from This Morning.

"And the people who did it to me, know, they know how important that building was to me. They know that when you throw someone under a bus, you've got to have a really bloody good reason to do it. Brand, ambition is not good enough. It's not a good enough reason to throw someone under a bus."

Holly Willoughby's representative declined to comment.