I have never knowingly watched This Morning, and I don’t know many people who greet the day with ITV’s cheery melange of celebrity interviews, entertainment news, and topical discussions.
But then we would have to ask 60 people before the law of averages kicks in and we’d encounter a regular viewer of the show. This Morning attracts a daily audience of a million, so it’s fair to say that it’s not a significant stopping-off point on Britain’s cultural landscape. For reference, five million people watch Emmerdale.
Taking all this into account, I can’t be alone in wondering what all the fuss is about. When Philip Schofield initially stepped down from This Morning – and we didn’t know some of the substantive facts, just that he’d fallen out with his co-host Holly Willoughby – the show stopped short of playing martial music, but only just.
His non-appearance on the sofa was treated like a death in the family, with tributes paid and thanks given.
Now that we know the truth, it’s clear that this is a much more serious situation than a spat between two presenters, and Schofield’s behaviour has been, if not illegal, then extremely questionable.
Yet I still didn’t understand why it was treated as a national scandal, particularly when there are so many other aspects of public life to which we could direct our indignation.
I now get it. Whatever else Schofield did or didn’t do, he committed today’s equivalent of high treason for a person in his position: he lied. And he lied to everyone: friends, colleagues, ITV’s management, his family, his lawyers, and, heaven forfend, the Daily Mail. Barefaced lies about his relationship with an assistant of tender years.
How reckless he was, believing that the truth would not come out. And for not knowing that this is what, in the febrile and fragile showbusiness world he inhabits, kills your career.
Being exposed as a liar, and particularly about a sexual liaison, is almost the worst crime a celebrity can commit in the court of public opinion. It is catnip for social media trolls. Because there is no need for nuance, or equivocation, and there’s certainly no mitigation. He’s a liar and that’s it. Guilty as charged, with no chance of redemption.
Not only that, but ITV itself has been plunged into crisis. Maybe its management lied, too. Did they know what Schofield had done, and chose to ignore it? Can we believe anything we see on our screens any longer if we can’t trust that the presenters of their daytime show were, in Willoughby’s words, “besties”?
To a certain extent, programmes like This Morning, reliant on a partnership between presenters whose job is to convey amiability and harmony, are built on a lie. Surely they’re not as chummy as all that? Schofield and Willoughby went the extra mile, and took holidays together, so we were sold a version of reality that recent events suggest might not have been true.
So if Schofield existed, publicly, within a lie, it’s not surprising that he didn’t feel it incumbent on him to break the spell by being scrupulously truthful about his private behaviour. The fact remains, however, that the reaction to this chain of events has been overblown – communiqués issued, journalists briefed, statements of gravity and seriousness – and its consequence overstated.
Why don’t we save our anger for those whose lies really do touch our lives? The politicians who told us how wonderful Brexit would be? Or a prime minister who deceived his country by partying throughout Covid? Or a government who pledged to build 40 new hospitals? It’s as if we live in a time devoid of context, where the sins of a TV presenter are treated as the ultimate in moral corruption, and the real liars are, in Bob Dylan’s words, free to drink martinis and watch the sun rise.
