Lorraine Kelly finally breaks her silence about Phillip Schofield
Kelly, Schofield, and Willoughby all worked at ITV. (Getty)
TV presenter and long time LGBTQ+ ally Lorraine Kelly has admitted that she still “misses” Phillip Schofield and his co-star Holly Willoughby, after the pair left ITV’s This Morning last year.
Kelly told Woman and Home magazine: “If you’d told me at the start of [last] year that Holly and Phil wouldn’t be [on This Morning], I wouldn’t have believe you. But you know what? The show will continue. She’ll be fine. He’ll be fine. It will all be ok.”
Kelly continued, “They’re good people. I miss them. They’re smashing, they made me laugh a lot and every time I was on This Morning as a guest, they were a delight.”
Phillip Schofield, 61, stepped down from his role presenting This Morning after 20 years last May after admitting to an “unwise but not illegal” relationship with a younger, male colleague at the show during his 27-year marriage to Stephanie Lowe.
However, Schofield said that his decision to quit the show was not related to the affair, which some claimed was an abuse of his ‘power’ as an older, more famous man.
In a statement to the Daily Mail, he also admitted to lying about the relationship and confirmed that he met the younger man “when he was a teenager and was asked to help him get into television”, but that it became “more than a friendship” when he began working on This Morning.
Willoughby remained as a presenter on This Morning after Schofield left, and wrote on Instagram that it was “very hurtful” to have been lied to by her friend. However, she also said that “the sofa won’t feel. the same without him”.
She finally left This Morning in October, saying that she felt she had to “make this decision” for herself and her family. This came after a man was arrested for allegedly planning to kidnap and murder her, though Willoughby did not directly address this.
Schofield came out as gay in 2020, telling The Sun that he always suspected that he might have been gay when he got married but suppressed the feeling.
He and his wife separated after he came out publicly but said: “I still love Steph as much as when we first met. More, probably.”
Willoughby also supported Schofield after he came out as gay, writing on Instagram that she had “never been more proud”.
