Philip Schofield’s ‘mea culpa’ interview shows lies always catch you out in the end

What miserable viewing, to watch a man who has lost everything and knows he only has himself to blame.

This was not Prince Andrew and Emily Maitlis on Newsnight, an encounter so disastrous that it strayed into the comical.

Schofield told Amol Rajan that the love of his daughters was the only thing that has saved him from suicide. “I don’t see a future,” he said. There were no tears, which somehow made the interview more alarming.

Schofield said he was speaking out because the young man with whom he had his affair is “an innocent person who is vulnerable and didn’t do anything wrong”. But the former lover has attracted nothing but sympathy and no one has accused him of wrongdoing.

It felt as if the true purpose of the interview was to tell people, as Schofield did in the opening minutes, that “you come to a point where you just think, ‘How much are you supposed to take?’ All those people who write all of that stuff, do they ever think that there’s actually a person at the other end?” Meaning: himself.

He has been painted as a monster and wants to put the record straight. He cut a pathetic figure – and revealed in conversation with The Sun that he’d been seeking refuge in a vape and a bottle of Southern Comfort – but it was noticeable that his voice became stronger, and his manner more forceful when confronting allegations of bullying and toxic behaviour on the set of This Morning.

Schofield may be a broken man, but he hasn’t lost all of his pride. He insisted that his friends did not recognise that portrayal and had contacted him to say, “I loved working with you.” But none of those people have yet to say so publicly.

But the bullying claims are neither here nor there. The issue is Schofield’s relationship with a 20-year-old runner, a 15-year-old schoolboy when they first met – although he insists that nothing inappropriate happened during the intervening years.

Schofield apologised to those he had hurt. He said that the affair was wrong. But he also defended himself.

The 45-minute interview was part self-flagellation, part self-preservation. He does not seem to fully accept the inevitable abuse of power in this relationship, and claimed the reason this story has become so big is “predominantly homophobia”.

Comparing himself to Caroline Flack was unwise. While he set out the anatomy of a lie – that first denial that anything was going on, which he then repeated to his co-host and friend, Holly Willoughby, and a cursory investigation by ITV management – Schofield is still lying, if only to himself.

He and the young man in question were simply “mates” until the relationship turned sexual in his dressing room? Come on. Star presenters do not “hang out” with the kid who makes the tea.

Rajan was an assiduous interviewer, asking uncomfortable questions but mindful of the BBC’s duty of care to a man who, by his own description, is teetering on the edge.

It was a tricky assignment.

But this is an odd subject for BBC News to cover. The story becomes bigger if it emerges that senior ITV executives were involved in a cover-up, or that the broadcaster was guilty of serious safeguarding failures. An external investigation is under way; perhaps more will come out.

The only thing of which we can be certain is that a lot of people – the young man involved, Schofield’s wife, his daughters – have been damaged. If the interview told you anything, it was that lies catch up with you in the end. (© Telegraph Media Group Ltd)