Phillip Schofield has said he’s afraid to leave the house amid the fallout from his secret affair with a younger male colleague.
In the ex-TV presenter’s first interview since he resigned from ITV and its morning broadcast show, he said he feared getting spat on in public.
“I do not know a time I will be able to walk out of the door,” Schofield told The Sun. “I don’t have any spirit. My friends tell me, ‘It will get better’. It won’t. Not now. Not this one.”
The former This Morning host, 61, said he was currently getting by “hour by hour” and that he’s got “my girls and my friends”.
He continued by assuming responsibility for the backlash, saying: “I deserve it; it’s my fault.”
However, he questioned where the public’s outrage stemmed from.
“Are they spitting at me because I had an affair at work and lied about it?” he asked.
(PA Archive)
“See there’s the difference,” Schofield said, arguing that age gaps in reported heterosexual relationships involving Hollywood star Leonardo DiCaprio were “accepted”.
“It is not accepted if it’s in the gay world,” he said.
Schofield said he and his former lover had met when the man was 15 and he was in his mid-fifties but the affair did not begin until the man started working at ITV roughly four years later. Schofield denied “grooming” him.
Lawyers representing Schofield and the man have confirmed these accounts.
At the time of the affair, Schofield was with his wife Stephanie Lowe, whom he married in 1993. He later came out as gay in 2020. The two have since split up, but remain legally married.
The disgraced host previously said he had “lost everything” after admitting to the affair, and that the fallout had had a “catastrophic effect” on his mental health.
British actor Rupert Everett recently defended Schofield, condemning the media for its “homophobic” coverage of the affair.
“They should drop it,” Everett said.