Watching Phillip Schofield baring his soul on the Channel 5 show ‘Cast Away’ is something I watched so you don’t have to. For the uninitiated he was sent to a desert island off Madgascar, alone, with no cameraman or sound person. His task was to survive for ten days and to record his thoughts on what has happened to him. It’s not an easy watch. Indeed, I’m not sure Channel 5 have covered themselves in glory in that they have a duty of care towards Schofield and he is clearly not of balanced mind. He mouths the words ‘What I did was unwise’ but there’s no recognition that it was also wrong. Watching him break down, watching him cry, I feel like a prurient curtain twitcher. It’s a profoundly uncomfortable experience. Phillip Schofield has been a part of all of our TV experiences going back to the 1990s and Gordon the Gofer. I remember taking my Mum to see ‘Joseph and his Amazing Technicolour Raincoat’ in which Schofield was playing Joseph. We were disappointed it wasn’t Jason Donovan, to be honest. I was never a regular viewer of morning television or ‘The Cube’, but whenever I saw him on TV I could see he had a real talent for presenting. The only time I ever appeared on ‘This Morning’ Eamonn Holmes was presenting, so I don’t think I have ever met him. However, I did hear rumours that he could be difficult to get along with and a bit grand. That’s not unusual in the world of TV. When it emerged that he had been having a relationship with a young former ITV employee, I didn’t share in the shock of most other people. The young guy in question was not under-age and these sort of relationships can happen. Many people disapprove of relationships which have a big age gap, especially if it is between two men – less so if it’s an older man and a younger woman, it has to be said. From all the accounts I have read, it didn’t simply seem to be about a one off shag. There appeared to be genuine feelings between the two of them. Schofield’s big mistake was to not acknowledge the power imbalance. We now know of so many scandals where a person in power has used that power to sexually exploit a more junior person. On the evidence I have seen, I do not believe that is what happened here, but perception is the mother of reality. My conclusions from this sorry tale are that him doing this Channel 5 programme was unwise. Watching it, I feel less sympathetic to him that I did before. His subsequent lashing out at Holly Willougby and others may have been heartfelt, but they were unedifying. He believes they ‘threw him under a bus’. It’s his way of excusing his behaviour. No one threw him under a bus except himself. Having said that, I don’t believe his ‘crime’ was enough to lose him his entire career, even if I can see why his days at ‘This Morning’ had to be numbered. But at the moment, there doesn’t appear to be a way back. In the second episode of ‘Cast Away’ Schofield more than hints that the programme would be his last and that it was time to move on and do something else. I don’t believe that for a moment. Television invented him. It also spat him out. But my bet is, we haven’t seen the last of Philip Schofield on our screens.   As a society, surely we need to have a discussion about why Al Pacino having a child at the age of 84 with a 29 year old woman is more acceptable than a gay may of around 60 having a relationship with an 18 year old. And I’m not talking about myself, I hasten to add!  But it does indicate how our societal values are sometimes both warped and hypocritical. It's similar to how newspapers give far more coverage to a female teacher having a sexual relationship with a sixth former than a male one. And the very same people who can’t see an issue with a 16 year old lad having sex with a 35 year old female teacher, will have a very different attitude to a 16 year old girl doing the same with a 35 year old male. But the issue is the same as with Schofield. It’s not so much the age gap, it’s the power dynamic. And everyone should be more aware of that phenomenon in the workplace.

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