(Image: PA)
Phillip Schofield tells how 'dark' life got and support from ill mum in emotional TV return
by Jessica Sansome · Manchester Evening NewsPhillip Schofield has reflected on how "dark" his life became and how his daughters helped him "take a step back from the edge" as he returns to television for the first time in over a year.
The scandal-hit star is making his TV comeback on the brand-new three-part Channel 5 series next week. The three-part series, which begins on Monday (September 30). It is his first appearance on a TV series since he left ITV in May 2023 after he admitted to an “unwise but not illegal” affair with a younger male colleague.
Phillip Schofield: Cast Away will see the 62-year-old marooned on a desert island off the coast of Madagascar for 10 days armed with nothing but camera gear and a lip balm, following his absence from the limelight.
Following his arrival at the small island of Nosy Ankarea, Phillip reflects on how the survivalist experience is helping to empty what he calls his "toxicity tanks". He says he wants people to “bugger off and let me get on with the quiet life that you’ve all given me”, and then reflects on how "dark" things became.
Phillip, who had presented This Morning alongside Holly Willoughby from 2009 until his exit, appears to hint in the first episode that he considered suicide, as he talks about how when his daughters, Ruby and Molly, were looking after him.
Speaking alone to camera, on the island, he says when he was in the media storm, he "got so, so close, I had everything in place, everything was set up and everything was ready".
He added: “Molly said, ‘Do you imagine what this would do to us if you actually managed to pull this off? Imagine what would happen. Can you imagine what it would do to me if you did this on my watch’, and that was just enough to take a step back from the edge. I could have been hospitalised. I had the option to be hospitalised, but then I thought, that’s going to get out. So I just raced to the family home and shut the gates."
(Image: Channel 5)
The TV personality also recounts a visit to his mother, Pat, in hospital, when a fan gave him a hug and told him he supported him. Getting tearful, he adds: "I never, in my wildest, wildest dreams, thought that I would sit here and and look at this and do this, discover something new every day.
"(It’s) nice to discover new things about yourself, like for you, for you personally. You don’t look online. People tell you what they think you’re like." While talking about coming out during an episode of This Morning alongside his former co-presenter Holly in 2020, Schofield says the "wheels came off".
He added: "I know that coming out for so many people is liberating, and it’s freedom on a plate, absolutely be yourself, live your life to the absolute full. That’s the saying, just live your best life. But for me, doing it later in life, at the moment it’s just given me more anguish than joy because I’m fully aware of the damage that it leaves. I still have the love of my family, never wavered."
He also says there has been "such a chunk of my older life that I’ve just been sad, locked myself away, put myself into into my own personal lockdowns over and over and over again". He added: "We’re here for such a brief space of time, so tiny. What’s the point in wasting it? What’s the point in not being happy regardless?"
Phillip Schofield: Cast Away airs at 9pm on Monday, September 30, on Channel 5, and will continue on Tuesday and Wednesday at the same time.