As it stands, ITV’s story just doesn’t add up

Depending on who you believe, either everyone at This Morning knew about Phillip Schofield’s affair with a young colleague, or no one knew.

If you are on team Eamonn Holmes, ITV bosses “had to know” and decided to “cover up” the truth. If you are on team Holly Willoughby, who returned to This Morning yesterday, Schofield’s colleagues have been “let down” by his lies and accepted nothing happened.

Now it is the turn of MPs to try to get to the truth, as Magnus Brooke, ITV’s group director of strategy, policy and regulation appears before the Commons culture, media and sport committee. He will be asked who knew what, and when, about Schofield’s sexual relationship with a runner 34 years his junior, and what was done to investigate rumours of their affair.

He will also be asked about the circumstances of the runner’s departure from This Morning and from ITV, and about suggestions a whistleblower was “managed out” after complaining about the show’s “toxic” culture.

Mr Brooke, who has only been on the ITV board since last October, is likely to be a mere warm-up act for the star witness, ITV chief executive Dame Carolyn McCall, who will give evidence to the committee next week.

Dame Caroline Dinenage, the chairman of the committee, has said that Dame Carolyn’s public statement about the saga “posed as many questions as it answered”.

Who knew what when?

Schofield first met the boy when he was 15, and subsequently, in 2015, when the then 19-year-old was seeking work experience, Schofield helped him get a placement at This Morning. He was hired as a runner on the show when he was aged 20.

According to Schofield’s account, their affair began “a few months” after the younger man began working on the show, when “something happened” in his dressing room. He says they had sex “maybe four or five times” more over the following months, which would suggest it was over by 2017. Yet in a letter to Dame Caroline, ITV’s Dame Carolyn said that “rumours of a relationship first began to circulate in late 2019/early 2020”. If that is true, why did these rumours only reach the ears of bosses two years after Schofield’s extramarital affair with the runner had supposedly ended?

Cristo Foufas, a presenter on TalkTV who previously worked as a producer at ITV, has claimed that “everyone” on the production staff knew about the relationship, which was “an open secret”.

He told the Jeremy Vine show that: “I was a producer at ITV Daytime during the period where this was all taking place. It was known among the production staff and people lower down the food chain what was going on. Everyone knew that he was with Phillip.”

Moreover, a widely reported incident at the National Television Awards, when the runner is said to have declared his love for Schofield to his colleagues, is understood to have happened in 2020, ten days before Schofield came out as gay on This Morning.

Holmes has said “those in authority had to know” what was going on because, according to Holmes, the runner would travel between Schofield’s flat and the ITV studios in taxis paid for by ITV.

Schofield has denied this, saying he did not have an ITV account for taxi hire and that his former boyfriend only visited his flat once.

Holmes claims senior managers were involved in “a total cover-up. Those in authority had to know. They had to know what was going on and they thought they would dodge the bullet”.

As well as Dame Carolyn, those authority figures at ITV include Kevin Lygo, director of television at ITV; Emma Gormley, director of daytime TV, and Martin Frizell, editor of This Morning.

Did they tread lightly because of fears they would be accused of homophobia?

ITV’s Dame Carolyn has said that both Schofield and his lover were questioned and both “categorically denied the rumours”, as did Schofield’s agents at the YMU talent agency, which has now dropped him as a client.

She said that: “In addition, ITV spoke to a number of people who worked on the This Morning and wider daytime team and were not provided with, and did not find any evidence of a relationship beyond hearsay and rumour. Given the ongoing rumours, we continued to ask questions of both parties, who both continued to deny the rumours, including as recently as this month.”

MPs will want to know who was questioned, and whether anything else was done rather than speaking to people. Did anyone, for example, check the records for taxi bookings? And did they look at the Twitter messages exchanged between Schofield and the runner that started when he was 15 (and which Schofield has characterised as a “completely innocent backwards-and-forwards over a period of time, about a job, about careers”)?

What did Holly Willoughby know?

Holly Willoughby, whose apparent rift with Schofield presaged his confession and resignation, told viewers that she was “shaken, troubled, let down” by what had happened and “full of questions”.

She barely mentioned Schofield’s name, describing him only as “someone who was not telling the truth”.

But photographs have emerged of Schofield and his former lover leaving a This Morning Live event together in 2018, and of the relatively junior staff member joining the stars on stage at the National Television Awards. Was she also unaware that the runner had, as reported, declared his love for Schofield? Nadine Dorries, the former culture secretary, has said Willoughby “has questions to answer”.

Why did Schofield’s lover leave This Morning and was he given a payout?

According to ITV’s Dame Carolyn, the runner, who has been described as popular and excellent at his job by numerous former colleagues, left This Morning in 2019 and moved to Loose Women, which she described as “a promotion”. It was also in 2019 or early 2020 that Dame Carolyn says the internal investigation began.

Was any pressure brought to bear on the runner to leave This Morning? Two years after his promotion, he left ITV, and is now working in a remote pub, his hopes of making it big in television far behind him.

There have also been reports that the young man was given a payout when he left ITV, which sources close to the situation say was part of a redundancy package, and Dame Caroline Dinenage, has made it clear that she intends to ask executives whether this is true. She also wants to establish if he was asked to sign a non-disclosure agreement when he left.

The letter to the committee from ITV’s Dame Carolyn said that the runner left in 2021 and that “given the social media scrutiny of him, we have offered him our support throughout this period and indeed are still doing so”. Dame Caroline Dinenage has said this statement is ambiguous, as it does not specify when the support began; whether any of the support was financial, and, if the support began in 2021, why ITV thought it necessary if nothing untoward had happened.

Was there a cover-up?

Dr Ranj Singh, once a regular guest on This Morning, has claimed he was “managed out” of the programme after he raised the alarm about a “toxic” culture on the show.

He said he grew “increasingly worried about how things were behind the scenes and how people, including myself, were being treated”. He raised concerns about Frizell’s behaviour, in particular, with Gormley, and “then found myself being used less and less”. He has said he then “took my concerns directly to the top of ITV” two years ago. Dame Carolyn said an external review prompted by Singh’s complaint found no evidence of bullying or discrimination.  Holmes, too, found himself frozen out after blowing the whistle. He has said he went to “people who worked for Carolyn McCall” in November 2019 urging them to investigate.

He and his wife Ruth Langsford were replaced as the regular Friday presenters of This Morning in November 2020 and moved to holiday cover, before leaving in 2021. Holmes has said he was never told why he was dropped.

Were there others?

Schofield has dodged questions about whether he has had other relationships with men. When the BBC’s Amol Rajan asked him if the runner was the only man he had slept with, or if there had been others, Schofield said: “This interview is not about other experiences.”

MPs would be within their rights to ask ITV executives if they had investigated whether Schofield had had any other relationships with junior colleagues in the seven years since the affair with the runner began. Whether they will get to the heart of the matter remains to be seen.