What’s next for Phillip Schofield? Life beyond This Morning as Holly Willoughby returns without co-star
i News
Mark Borkowski, a PR strategist representing celebrities and corporate heavyweights, tells i that there is likely some scope for Schofield’s return one day to a TV channel- if not ITV or BBC, as we have seen in other examples.
“It was said that Jonathan Ross was finished over Sachs-gate [Ross was hauled off the BBC after he and Russell Brand left lewd ‘prank’ messages on actor Andrew Sachs’s phone about sex with his granddaughter],” he says, “but there he is on primetime ITV as one of the panelists on the biggest entertainment show of the moment, The Masked Singer.
“People thought Jeremy Clarkson was finished after being dropped from Top Gear [After what the BBC called an “unprovoked physical and verbal attack” that left a colleague bleeding and seeking hospital treatment] but he went to present his show on Amazon, and the rest is history.
“Andy Gray and Richard Keys were sacked by Sky Sports for a host of on-air sexism, and while they’ve not been on British TV since, they’re probably now earning triple what they were getting on Sky by doing Al Jazeera. So there’s always a route back for the ego.”
Borkowski says that the BBC won’t take Schofield back, and neither will ITV, but that doesn’t mean he won’t have a career at all. “He’s a consummate broadcaster. He’s obviously failed in his professionalism and his personal life, but he’s one of the rare talents who can still present live. While not immediately, I could see him returning to TV.”
For now, though, Borkowski advises that Schofield disappear from the limelight for a while. “He should go and deal with this quietly away from cameras, with his family. This has evidently had a profound effect on his health and he has to focus on that.
“But in the end, whether someone can find a way back to a career depends on the value they bring, and he has value in an age where media outlets and TV channels are looking for eyeballs, for clicks, for engagement. People know he’d give you that.
“What’s more is that he’ll still have fans after this. Yes there are pile-ons on Twitter about him, but in general, the public for the most part are likely to be fairly forgiving. That’s why he’s playing the empathy card and talking about his family sticking by him.
“I think that in the future, someone looking for eyeballs could bring Schofield back at some point as a conversation starter.”