Last night Eamonn Holmes told me that taxis ‘paid by ITV’ would ferry married Phillip Schofield’s much younger male colleague and secret lover from his London apartment to the This Morning studios after their Thursday night ‘playtime’ together.
What was a truly jaw dropping revelation from the legendary presenter to the public was not a surprise for those working within ITV Daytime as they’ve known for many years about the sordid details of the affair with the teenager 30 years Schofe’s junior, who he first met when he was 15 and helped secure a job on the legendary show.
When their relationship ended, he was moved from This Morning to Loose Women in an unprecedented move ITV tried to explain away as a ‘promotion’.
In my shocking interview, Eamonn also accused ITV of being responsible for a ‘total cover up’ of the scandal that now threatens to engulf the country’s biggest commercial broadcaster.
But, as senior executives at ITV cling on to their jobs, there is growing pressure on them to reveal exactly who knew what and when, and why the investigation they claim to have launched in early 2020 didn’t uncover the truth.
DAN WOOTTON: Last night Eamonn Holmes told me that taxis ‘paid by ITV’ would ferry married Phillip Schofield’s much younger male colleague and secret lover from his London apartment to the This Morning studios after their Thursday night ‘playtime’ together
DAN WOOTTON: In my shocking interview, Eamonn also accused ITV of being responsible for a ‘total cover up’ of the scandal that now threatens to engulf the country’s biggest commercial broadcaster
ITV’s uber woke chief executive Carolyn McCall has refused to comment publicly, instead hiding behind corporate statements suggesting that she swallowed the obvious lies that Schofield now admits he told his bosses.
But I have obtained a potentially significant email sent to McCall and Julian Bellamy, the managing director of ITV Studios, which makes This Morning, on February 10, 2020.
Written by a former This Morning staff member who had since left the show, it demanded an investigation into what they feared was an abuse of power by Schofield, suggesting at the very least he should be suspended from the programme while the widespread allegations were looked into.
I have agreed not to name the staff member, but can reveal they had no personal animosity towards Phillip, who was not involved in their decision to leave.
The email to McCall and Bellamy read in part: ‘With the current rumours and accusations swirling around about Phillip Schofield…why is he still on our screens? Why have ITV not suspended him pending an internal inquiry?
DAN WOOTTON: I have obtained a potentially significant email sent to McCall and Julian Bellamy, the managing director of ITV Studios, which makes This Morning, on February 10, 2020
‘I would have thought in this day and age that a mainstream broadcaster such as ITV ought to be seen to be doing all it can to deal with issues like this, find out where the truth lies and, in the meantime, suspend those who the rumours concern?’
In addition, the ex-This Morning staff member provided McCall and Bellamy with a link to a YouTube video, which now has nearly two million views, detailing the history of the relationship between Schofield and his young colleague, including purported social media contact between the pair and a number of photographs of them together socially and at work at ITV.
The former staff member concluded the email: ‘Come on ITV – it’s time to take action and do the responsible thing.’
Neither McCall or Bellamy had the courtesy to respond to the email, prompting the ex-staffer to send multiple further messages, which were also ignored.
One read: ‘I find this all frankly disgusting.’
At the weekend, ITV claimed it had launched an investigation into the improper relationship between Schofield and the young producer in early 2020, even though I had first gone to the company with details of the story in November 2019, which they dismissed as ‘malicious gossip’.
In a problematic twist for ITV, however, Schofield’s former lover is believed to have denied he was ever questioned as part of the so-called internal investigation.
Today, I asked ITV’s press office – which Holmes branded the ‘ministry of lies’ in my GB News interview last night – about the emails sent to McCall and Bellamy and whether they were what prompted the failed investigation.
They refused to comment and instead referred me to a previous statement that read: ‘ITV can confirm that when rumours of a relationship between Phillip Schofield and an employee of ITV first began to circulate in early 2020 ITV investigated.’
But this new email makes it increasingly hard for McCall to distance herself from the scandal.
Of course, she could claim that she didn’t read the email or chose to ignore its contents, given the sender was no longer an ITV worker.
But for an executive who has previously prided herself with how she loves being on the factory room floor with her colleagues getting her hands dirty, it is becoming increasingly hard to believe she was unaware of the allegations against Schofield.
DAN WOOTTON: ITV’s uber woke chief executive Carolyn McCall has refused to comment publicly, instead hiding behind corporate statements suggesting that she swallowed the obvious lies that Schofield now admits he told his bosses
Remember, eight ITV household names complained to me about what was going on back in 2019.
A furious Loose Women star told me: ‘We shouldn’t be having to deal with Phillip’s messed up situation. We love (the young worker) but he’s very troubled now. What if he can’t cope?’
Or what about the National Television Awards in January 2020, where MailOnline has today revealed pictures of the young lover next to Holly Willoughby, even though Phillip’s wife was in attendance at the event.
What happened that night was the talk of ITV and within days Phillip would be tearfully coming out as gay to Holly on the sofa.
Of course, McCall’s silence over this growing scandal on her watch is particularly galling given the brutality she has shown when it comes to dispensing with high profile talent who break from her woke world view.
Piers Morgan, Jeremy Kyle, Carol McGiffin, Jeremy Clarkson and, of course, Eamonn have all found themselves surplus to requirements for questioning the narrative around her pal Meghan Markle or the Covid pandemic.
Yet her company appeared to act in a wilfully blind manner when it came to the toxic environment at its golden goose This Morning.
But as Eamonn tells me in the second part of my interview broadcasting tonight on GB News: ‘We are at a stage when ITV and their share price would have dipped and money talks. You’ve got to look how she’s running the station; what she allows to happen.’
As a publicly listed company, McCall owes ITV shareholders an explanation about what really happened.
The truth, this time; not the saccharin fairytale Schofield offered up on the sofa to an unsuspecting British public.
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