Then, Phillip, you never had anything worth having. It sounds like your daughters have been great. Is their love worth nothing? It sounds like you have friends. You've got your health. Everything? Oh Phil you are SUCH a stupid boy.

He seems to have the classic narcissistic traits; just like most people in the media.

JK2006 wrote:
Then, Phillip, you never had anything worth having

So wise and true.

I've been called a narcissist. Self obsessed perhaps (aren't we all?). But not at all impressed by media or public opinion (or I'd never have knocked Live Aid). I've never cared about media image - simply used it. Because I found celebrity very useful but not at all important. Phillip has fallen for his own image, as so many do. It's a change in direction, that's all. We all get forced to change our jobs sometimes. Far less worrying that being affected by serious health conditions. We simply need to value what is worth valuing.

It is unwise to make our happiness contingent on anything other than ourselves because everything changes eventually.

I also don't think this is self centered; because happy and content people spread happiness and contentment.

Phillip seems to have made the mistake of thinking he is the on screen Philip Schofield. So he now feels destroyed when he should feel liberation; and see opportunities he never would have seen before.

Maybe you could find a way to write to him, JK. Judging from the BBC interview, it does look as if he may have lost Holly Willoughby's friendship. Some people just seem to be sticking the boot into him, like Eamonn Holmes, who doesn't really seem to be as nice or decent as he appears to think he his. Having an axe to grind with ITV because of how your employment with them ended and having a go at them as the employee of a rival company is one thing, but kicking a man when he's down doesn't look good. At least Alison Hammond and Desmond O'Leary seem to be keeping their lip buttoned, at least publicly. It all seems to be tremendously petty and a huge fuss over nothing, and if Phillip Schofield's TV career is at an end because of it, it seems very sad for him.

His media career was built on the foundations set by his years as a boy-next-door pin-up on CBBC/R1/Going Live - it bought him 30 years of goodwill.
His problem now is having spent 20 years in the ever-toxic media world of Daytime ITV he became King of Sanctimony, becoming more sanctimonious with every passing year. That doesn't sit well with 35- year 'open secrets' and he knows the goodwill that carried him has expired.
He also knows, I am sure, how strong the currents of false allegations are given how his show has played such a role in promoting them. He knows the truth about those who have fallen, and even probably the basic gist of the JS 'reality'.

Such a shame, but then that's the nature of the 21st Century alas

Why is there an automatic presumption in life that any young person in an age-gap relationship must have been abused or harmed in the process? We have a clear age of consent and the law assumes that anyone over the age of 16 is in a position to make informed choices. Sure, they might not always be the best choices, and they may regret some of those choices, but if a 16 year-old can legally do something as harmful as making a girl pregnant and causing her to have the foetus aborted, I’m not sure how kissing or having sex with an older man can be anywhere near as harmful!

Furthermore, if the young man in question is f***ed up and in a bad place right now - is that as a direct result of having a relationship with Schofield, or is it a result of the moral panic and media witch-hunt surrounding it? I suspect it’s way more likely to be the latter.

Schofield has lost his career, his marriage is under strain, and he is a clear suicide risk. The young man will now feel that all of this is his fault - that if he hadn’t kissed Schofield in the dressing room that all this would never have happened. Furthermore his own career has been ruined. And yet the moral majority are acting as if they’re somehow acting in HIS interests! Instead, they’ve ruined two lives unnecessarily.

It will be perfectly normal for him to need to mourn his old life and career. Working on TV is the only job he's ever known, and he himself acknowledges he was lucky to have done it for essentially the whole of his adult life (stretching back to his time in New Zealand).

But given he's spent the last two decades of it at the very top tier, being paid more in a year than most people expect to earn in a lifetime, you'd like to think he's pretty financially comfortable.

So get over it Phil and embrace the future. You can retire at 61 financially secure and spend the next 30 years leading a life of leisure as an ordinary person. You might not have contemplated this before, but you can actually live an entirely different dream. Lots to be thankful for here.