Phillip Schofield says he was “fired” from ITV because of “someone else’s crime”.

Phillip Schofield says he was “fired” from ITV because of “someone else’s crime”.

The former daytime presenter, 62, is making a dramatic TV comeback as host of his Channel 5 show Cast Away after stepping down from hosting ITV’s This Morning in May 2023 after an affair with a junior attracted widespread attention had colleague.

He has now claimed he has not quit the show and says he was fired because of a separate wave of negative publicity over the conviction of his pedophile brother Timothy, 54, who was sentenced to 12 months in prison in April 2023 for 11 sex acts were offenses involving a child between October 2016 and October 2019 – including two offenses of sexual activity with a child.

Phillip said in the final episode of his desert island series about how he flew into a rage when his agent called him to tell him he was being sacked by ITV: “My phone rang and I picked it up: ‘Mate, are you.’ in a quiet place?’ ‘ – which is never a good sign.”

He added that his agent told him: “Um, I’m in a bit of shock. I’m afraid you’ve been sacked from This Morning.

“That’s it, it’s done. You’re not going back on Monday.”

Phillip said he asked, “What? For what reason?”, to which his agent replied: “I think it’s because of the advertising partner.”

The TV host continued: “(I told my agent) This has nothing to do with me… this has nothing to do with me. “Why should I be fired for something someone else did?”

He said: “I just got fired. Because of him. Because I became more of a story than a program. It was better for the show, better for the network.

“And I agreed to say that I resigned because it would be better for everyone.

“I was always open and honest with everyone at work about what happened to my brother. I was fired because of the bad publicity. For someone else’s crime.

“And the thing is, about a week later, I beat myself up about everything else because I thought the only way to even make this right for everyone was to do a complete mea culpa.

“I came clean about my affair. What people don’t know is that I didn’t get fired from This Morning when I admitted I lied. It was before. Because of someone I used to call brother.

“But looking back, that’s my last story.”

An ITV source has denied Phillip’s claims that he was sacked because of his brother’s crimes. A source told the Daily Mirror: “Phillip’s new comments are simply untrue… we stood by him during his brother’s court case and then he resigned when it became too much.”

“There was a lot going on and some relationships on the show had become untenable, as was reported at the time.”

“He then admitted he had lied about having an affair and resigned from ITV entirely.

“We didn’t fire him, he lied to us and then he resigned, there’s not much more to say and we as a network just want to move on.”