In his GB News tell-all interview, Eamonn Holmes proceeded to make explosive charges about Phillip Schofield.
The 63-year-old former This Morning host sat down with Dan Wootton in an attempt to expose the former ITV broadcaster, who recently resigned from ITV after confessing to lying about an affair with a much younger male colleague.
As a result, Phil, 61, was dumped by his agency of 35 years and will no longer present the British Soap Awards, which would have been his final public committment.
He is no longer a Prince’s Trust ambassador, and the future of This Morning is unknown, with stories circulating that guests are declining interviews and corporations are refusing to renew sponsorship arrangements.
Meanwhile, Holly Willoughby, 42, took an early half-term vacation and will return to the sofa next week, but she has also issued a statement saying Phil lied to her about his connection with the runner.
Since the beginning of the drama, Eamonn has been quite open about his love for Phil, dubbing him a “liar” and alleging he mistook him and his wife Ruth Langsford for “fools.”
He made surprising charges regarding Phil’s connection with the young coworker while he was married and before he came out as homosexual in the first half of his GB News interview.
He stated that Phil would have ‘playtime’ with the child on Thursdays before being transported to work the following day, and that Ruth is still in contact with the former runner.
And now, Eamonn has stated he feels ’embarrassed’ and ‘ashamed’ about how he backed Phil when he came out as homosexual on This Morning in a historic moment in February 2020.
He claims Phil’s outing was a ploy to get ahead of any additional headlines about the connection.
The morning following the National Television Awards, Eamonn was ‘ambushed’ by producers who informed him that the customary Friday programme with him and Ruth would not be airing because Holly and Phil were taking over for the first section.
He stated that the previous night’s NTAs witnessed the young runner who had an affair with Phil confront ITV stars, which Eamonn believes prompted Phil to confess his sexuality.
‘I’m driving in, they say, “Phillip will be driving in to appear on the programme today?”, “Why?”, “We can’t tell you, Holly will be coming in as well. You will be hosting bits of the programme but they have something to say.” I’m thinking, oh good! Hopefully, he’s going! But it wasn’t to be.’
Eamonn then described how Phil came out to him that morning.
‘He comes into our dressing room and he falls down on his knees, crying, I said, “What’s the matter?”, “I’m gay!”,’ Eamonn reenacted.
‘I looked at him and said, “Is that all? What is this?”, I thought he’d killed a child or something! I stood him up and pulled him up, and said, “So what, you’re gay!”, and that tied into a lot of things that you may have heard.
‘I think anyone to be imprisoned in a life that isn’t true to them is totally wrong and we were very supportive, Ruth hugged him. It wouldn’t have entered our minds that the man would’ve been discriminated against for being gay, so we were very, very supportive of that.’
Eamonn, on the other hand, stated that he felt ‘used’ in Phil’s coming out show.
He alleges that before production was about to begin, producers asked him and Ruth multiple times if they needed a script, and it gave him ‘bad vibrations,’ which is why he didn’t say anything in the opener and let Ruth do the talking.
This Morning then cut to Holly and Phil, with Eamonn dismissing their section as “false” and “choreographed.”
‘Then we notice, The Sun newspaper’s here, so the story was sold to them. The director of daytime was there, the editor was there, the agents YMU were there,’ and we began to feel… this is not our show at all,’ he said.
‘It then materialises that all is not as it seems.’
Eamonn then accused Phil of ‘doing a deal with the newspapers’ to put out a ‘version’ of events.
‘It was all a bit weird,’ he stated.
‘At that stage, though, I believed he was gay and he was coming out and that was the end of it. But we were lied to.
‘Ruth and I, to this day, are embarrassed and ashamed when we see those pictures,’ he said, referring to how he and Ruth hugged Phil after his big moment on the sofa.
‘We see people who are tortured by their sexuality and what they have to go through, and this man used it as a cover-up for something else that doesn’t reflect well on him.
‘We feel angry about that. We feel used.’
Phillip Schofield statement in full
‘I am making this statement via the Daily Mail to whom I have already apologised personally for misleading, through my lawyer who I also misled, about a story which they wanted to write about me a few days ago.
‘The first thing I want to say is: I am deeply sorry for having lied to them, and to many others about a relationship that I had with someone working on This Morning. I did have a consensual on-off relationship with a younger male colleague at This Morning.
‘Contrary to speculation, whilst I met the man when he was a teenager and was asked to help him to get into television, it was only after he started to work on the show that it became more than just a friendship. That relationship was unwise, but not illegal. It is now over.
‘When I chose to come out I did so entirely for my own wellbeing. Nobody “forced” me out. Neither I nor anyone else, to my knowledge, has ever issued an injunction, super or otherwise, about my relationship with this colleague, he was never moved on or sacked by or because of me. In an effort to protect my ex-colleague I haven’t been truthful about the relationship.
‘But my recent, unrelated, departure from This Morning fuelled speculation and raised questions which have been impacting him, so for his sake it is important for me to be honest now.
‘I am painfully conscious that I have lied to my employers at ITV, to my colleagues and friends, to my agents, to the media and therefore the public and most importantly of all to my family. I am so very, very sorry, as I am for having been unfaithful to my wife.
‘I have therefore decided to step down from the British Soap Awards, my last public commitment, and am resigning from ITV with immediate effect expressing my immense gratitude to them for all the amazing opportunities that they have given me.
‘I will reflect on my very bad judgment in both participating in the relationship and then lying about it. To protect his privacy, I am not naming this individual and my deepest wish is that both he and his family can now move on with their lives free from further intrusion, and that this statement will enable them to do so.
‘I ask the media now to respect their privacy. They have done nothing wrong, and I ask that their privacy should be respected.’
Source My Celebrity Life.
