Phillip Schofield says sex offender brother led to him being "fired for someone else's crime"

In the final episode of Channel 5’s Phillip Schofield: Cast Away, the 62-year-old revealed he would “never in a million years” decide to return to daytime TV.

Schofield went on to say he had always been “open and honest with everyone at work about what was happening” with his brother Timothy. His 54-year-old brother was convicted in April 2023 of 11 sexual offences involving a child between October 2016 and October 2019, including two of sexual activity with a child.

On the Channel 5 show he said he refused “to name and refuse to acknowledge” his brother who he claimed he had “absolutely no qualms whatsoever in shopping” to police, who he said had “praised” him for getting “justice done”.

The Oldham-born presenter said: “Even though they knew all of the facts the papers painted me out to be some sort of complicit agent. That was when my world started to collapse. My poor mum, had to tell her about that member of the family. To break that to your mother is tough.

“I had to go through everything with the hierarchy at ITV. The full entire story so that they knew I hadn’t done anything wrong. The full story. Everything came to a head the day before he was sentenced when my agent called.

“My phone rang and I picked it up, ‘mate, are you somewhere quiet’ which is never a good sign, ’I’ve got a bit of a shock, I’m afraid you’ve been let go from This Morning’. What? ‘Yeah that’s it, it’s done. You’re not going back on Monday’.

“What? because of what? ‘Think it’s the publicity, mate’, that’s got nothing to do with me, that has nothing to do with me. Why would I be sacked for something someone else did? I’ve just been fired because of him. Because I was becoming more of a story than the programme.

“It was better for the show, better for the channel. And I agreed to say that I’d resigned because it would be neater for everybody. I was always open and honest with everyone at work about what was happening with my brother. I was fired for the bad publicity, for someone else’s crime.

“And the thing is about a week later, I blew my own wheels off with everything else [his affair], because I thought the only way to even begin to put this right for everybody is to do a full mea culpa.”