‘ Telly was my safe space , the one thing I loved. Now I don’t know if I will ever work on telly again.’ Phillip Schofield gave an interview after he left This Morning , days after his ‘unwise but not illegal’ affair broke the trust of his fans, ITV and his co-host Holly Willoughby .
Now, one year after his uncomfortable departure from the public eye, the man who was on screens every single day, has become a ghost of TV’s past. But on Wednesday May 15, Schofe returned to social media for the very first time since he revealed the sexual relationship with a 20-year-old colleague at This Morning. On the surface, it was a post about nothing, taken from what appears to be a bed with his dog Alfie watching Formula One.
He captioned the post: ‘Thankfully Alfie is a big fan of F1.’ It has all the banality of a social media-inept dad, not a previous ‘national treasure’. But there’s a lot more to that post than a dog watching fast cars; it’s proof that the man who feared he’d never work again has found the courage to use his voice for the first time in a very long time.
It’s the first time in 12 months he’s been brave enough to indicate that, despite a year of hell, he’s starting to be OK. If Schofield is feeling well enough to talk, it’s about time we listened. It might not look like it, but actually there is a hope this is a far cry from the dishevelled, ‘disgraced’ TV star who said in a message to critics : ‘Do you want me to die? Because that.