Watch: Alison Hammond fights back tears speaking about Phillip Schofield
By Paul Glynn and Helen Bushby
Entertainment reporters
This Morning presenter Alison Hammond has broken down live on the programme while reacting to the departure of ex-colleague Phillip Schofield.
Schofield told the BBC he feels his “career is over” following the affair he had with a young male colleague.
Speaking on Friday’s show, Hammond said he had apologised and urged people not to judge his actions too harshly.
“I’m just finding it really painful because obviously I loved Phillip Schofield,” she said.
“And it’s weird because I still love Phillip Schofield. However what he’s done is wrong, he’s admitted it, he’s said sorry.
“But as a [TV] family we’re all really struggling to process everything and I never know what to say.”
She continued: “But I remember what my mum always said: ‘Use your Bible as your Sat Nav in life Al’, and in the Bible it says ‘he without sin, cast the first stone’.
“And I just don’t want to say anything bad because obviously I’m in conflict.”
Watch: Phillip Schofield said the affair was his “biggest, sorriest secret”
Schofield, 61, left the ITV show last week after he admitted lying about the affair with a male colleague, who he first met at the age of 15 and helped to get into the industry.
The network has asked a barrister to lead a review into its handling of the short-lived relationship.
This week, instead of its usual presenters Schofield and Holly Willoughby, This Morning has been fronted by Hammond alongside Dermot O’Leary.
O’Leary noted that “what Phil has done is wrong” but suggested, given the widespread coverage, there should now be concerns about his mental health.
Clutching a small green vape during an interview with the BBC’s Amol Rajan, Schofield said recent events had left him feeling suicidal and drew a parallel with the media treatment of both him and Caroline Flack.
Former Love Island presenter Flack’s death prompted an outpouring of grief as well as a demand for it to become a turning point for the treatment of celebrities on social media and the press.
She took her own life in 2020, having stood down from the dating show after she was charged with assaulting her partner in December.
Several Twitter users commented that Schofield’s comparison was “distasteful”.
Gyles Brandreth queries reaction
O’Leary said on This Morning: “As a society, quite rightly we talk about mental health all the time but that can’t be the preserve of people who are on the right side of history.”
Hammond added: “There’s [only] so much a man can take, isn’t there? And I don’t want any death in this situation.”
Schofield, who is married with two children, received an outpouring of support in 2020 after revealing he is gay.
Another This Morning regular, Gyles Brandreth, said the controversy around him was “a human story but with public implications”.
“The point is, the public implication is to do with broadcasting and to do with workplace rules, regulations, good behaviour [and] that is going to be dealt with by the review and we’ll learn the consequences of that,” he said.
“At the same time, we are dealing with the human being that all of us here have known and liked over many years, so it makes it difficult for us.
“And really, what I’m saying is that the reaction to it has been in some ways disproportionate at the human level.”
Schofield told The Sun he had blisters on his hands after doing a lot of vaping
Fellow broadcaster Richard Bacon also lent his support, tweeting it was “time to stop piling in on this human being”. The former Blue Peter presenter was sacked from the show in 1998 after admitting taking cocaine.
Former Good Morning Britain presenter and broadcaster Piers Morgan agreed it was “time to stop this relentless persecution of a guy who’s lost everything and looks right on the edge to me.
“He doesn’t seem to have committed any crime, and he’s not a govt minister.”
But Kelvin MacKenzie, former editor of the Sun, disputed Schofield’s claim that public scrutiny on his relationship with a younger man was homophobic.
“Don’t agree,” he posted. “Suspect it would have been even worse had he met a girl of 15, arranged for her to have a job with him at 18 and then at some stage turned the ‘friendship’ into an affair.”
“He’s only ‘sad’ because his dirty secret came out,” said political commentator Bushra Shaikh, “Otherwise he’d still be sat presenting on that sofa.
“[Forget] his crocodile tears.”
‘Difficult to listen to’
ITV chief executive Dame Carolyn McCall has been asked to face questions from MPs on the situation at ITV and This morning, at a session of the committee on 14 June.
Dame Caroline Dinenage, chair of Parliament’s Culture, Media and Sport Select Committee, told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme that Schofield’s interview was “very hard to listen to”.
“This is two lives blown apart by this incident,” she said.
“This is two careers devastated by this and not to mention all the families and loved ones that are going to be impacted as well. It’s a very difficult interview to listen to.”
Hammond also confirmed that Holly Willoughby would return to the sofa to present the show on Monday, alongside Josie Gibson.
