Phillip Schofield has been left feeling suicidal since "losing everything" amid his 'This Morning' exit.
Phillip Schofield left feeling suicidal since This Morning exit
The 61-year-old star - who has daughters Molly, 30, and 27-year-old Ruby with estranged wife Stephanie Lowe - sensationally quit the ITV1 daytime magazine show after 21 years last week shortly before he admitted to having an "unwise but not illegal" affair with a younger male colleague and insisted that his daughters are the only reason he is still alive as he compared his intense media scrutiny to that of former 'Love Island' host Caroline Flack, who took her own life in 2020 at the age of 40.
Speaking in his first television appearance since quitting 'This Morning', he told the BBC: "I have brought myself down. I am done. I have to talk about television in the past tense which breaks my heart. But it continues and it is relentless and it is day after day after day after day and if you do that, then don't think that is going to have the most catastrophic effect on someone's mind...do you want me to die? Because that's where I am. I have lost everything.
"My girls saved my life. They said last week...they hadn't left me for a moment, they'd been by my side every moment because they're scared to let me out of their sight. What is that like for daughters to have to go through something like that? And they said to me 'Don't you dare do this on our watch, we're supposed to be looking after you!' And if my girls hadn't been there, I wouldn't be here because I don't see a future. And so how much do you want a man to take, and are you truly only happy when he's dead? This is how Caroline Flack felt. "
The former 'Dancing on Ice' host went on to acknowledge that he had "done wrong" in starting up the affair - which he alleges began in his dressing room when the colleague was 20 years old - but slammed the coverage of the story as "constant" and has been unable to look at
"I know I've done something wrong and I've owned up to doing something wrong but it's constant. A mate was texting me saying 'What is the agenda? When is this going to stop?' Someone said I was being treated like Jack the Ripper. But I haven't looked at a single thing, that would be the final push. I haven't looked like a newspaper item, I've deleted all the apps. But people have said 'Can't believe you're being painted out to be this person.We know you, we love you. Please love the person we know you are.' But still, it comes. It is utterly relentless."
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