I was fired over brother..not for lying'

Ex-host tells of TV 'dismissal' but ITV insider blasts his 'untrue comments'

- MARK JEFFERIES

PHILLIP Schofield was accused of “lying again” last night, after claiming on his new TV show that he was sacked by ITV over his brother’s sexual assault conviction.

Timothy Schofield, then 54, was jailed for 12 years in May 2023 for sexually abusing a boy. TV host Phillip took time off screen during the court case and left This Morning soon after.

There were reports he had fallen out with co-presenter and best friend Holly Willoughby. When Schofield, 62, resigned from the ITV show, it was thought to be his own choice to do so.

Days later he resigned from all ITV work after it emerged his denial of an affair with a younger male colleague had been a lie. But in an extraordinary final episode of his new Channel 5 series, for which he spent 10 days alone on an island off Madagascar, Schofield insists that bosses actually forced him out.

He says: “What people don’t realise is I wasn’t fired from This Morning when I admitted lying. It was before, because of someone I used to call brother.

“I was fired for the bad publicity, for someone else’s crime.”

He says of his brother, who was found guilty of 11 sexual offences involving a child from 2016 to 2019: “I had absolutely no qualms whatsoever in shopping him.

“We were praised by the police, and we got justice done.

“But still, even though they knew all of the facts, the papers painted me out to be some sort of complicit agent.”

He recalls: “That’s where my world started to collapse.