As well as the love of my wife and my friends, I had my safe place: work. The closeness of the team around me, who were being so kind and caring because they, too, knew something was up. As I walked up the stairs from the production offices to the studio, I felt the distraction kick in.
Apart from home, this was where I was safest, in the studio, with people I adored, safe in the arms of a team and the comforting smell of TC3.
And then that professional rug was ripped from underneath my feet.
I have absolutely no problem with being held to account by newspapers. I know how lucky I am to have the job I have. I also know that in the game we all play, sometimes ‘it’s your turn’. Just as in The Lord of the Rings, where Sauron’s all-seeking eye fixes on Frodo, so the ever-searching eye of the press settles on someone in the business and holds us to account, often, quite rightly. It keeps our feet on the ground. We see it happening to our friends and we offer words of sympathy and comfort: ‘It’ll pass,’ or ‘It’ll be someone else tomorrow,’ or ‘No one believes it.’
Somewhere towards the end of 2019, Sauron’s eye settled on me, but with such severity it stunned me and everyone around me. I couldn’t understand what was happening. It felt like that moment between being asleep and being awake. When you wake up blinking and confused and, just for a moment, nothing makes sense. I was in that moment, but it lasted for months. Apparently, Holly and I were in the midst of a terrible feud. I was jealous of her success, the atmosphere at This Morning was strained, I was difficult to work with. I didn’t recognize the man I was being portrayed as or the environment we were apparently working in. I didn’t understand and, what’s more, neither did my friends or my colleagues. As someone who has always tried to be the most fun to be around and always professional and caring, I was reading about a ‘me’ who was a total stranger. It felt like death by a thousand cuts, each little wound not serious on its own but, collectively, I felt like I was bleeding out. How many times had we said in interviews that one nasty comment online seems harmless, but the destructive power of many comments can be a mental disaster? I live a lucky life, yes, I’ve worked hard, but it certainly appears to be charmed. As anyone looking in would rightly say, ‘It’s just a bit of criticism. Man up. Grow a pair. It’s the price you pay for the lovely house you live in, it’s part of the job.’ And that would have been absolutely true, had it not come on top of the most potentially catastrophic storm already raging in my head.
It went on, week after week, relentlessly feeding on itself and based on not one single truth that I could identify.
I think the most confusing story was my ‘continuing’ feud with Holly. What no one could possibly know at the time was that we were closer than we’d ever been. Holly knew my truth and was helping me to hold everything together. She was literally one of the friends I was desperately clinging on to. At work, I was constantly asked if I was okay. No, I really was not. I was not okay in any aspect of my life. I had nothing to hold on to. My ship was rudderless and sailing into the darkness. Again and again, Steph saved me. ‘It’ll pass.’ ‘It’ll be someone else tomorrow.’ ‘No one believes it.’
By this stage, Molly, who had been employed by James Grant after uni, had worked her way through the ranks to become one of my managers. It was increasingly unbearable for her to juggle between being a reassuring manager and a daughter increasingly deeply worried about her dad. I was also well aware of the fact that, at that time, she only knew half of the turmoil.
Christmas 2019 was difficult in the extreme. To use a quote from Friends: ‘There was rock bottom, then fifty feet of crap, and then me.’
No matter what, the James Grant mantra has always been, say nothing; no knee-jerk reactions. Keep your dignity. Keep your head down. If you comment, you add oxygen to the fire. Saying nothing starves it, but it’s so incredibly painful to stand in the eye of a storm and stay silent as it rages around you.
Steph was extraordinary. She sectioned off the shit in her head and concentrated on family and happiness. I was in total awe at her ability to host Christmas for twenty-two family members while I was in such a state. As I was hurting and brooding, the girls, in contrast, were kind and loving. This was all so painful for Molly, because she had to deal with the cruelty on a managerial level and the fall-out at home on a father/daughter level. It was upsetting her to see her dad in so much pain and be powerless to make it stop. The hugs I got from all three of my girls were vital. I was beginning to feel a dawning realization. There was nothing I could do about Sauron’s eye, but in the other aspect of my life I had to see if honesty could save me.
With Ruby.
All over Christmas and the New Year I was very low and my head was in an extremely dark place. As I watched the fireworks explode over London on the TV on New Year’s Eve, taking us into 2020, I sobbed quietly in the dark. The dawn of a New Year, and every bit of it looked terrifying. It’s hard to explain how I felt, and to some extent still sometimes feel. It’s like being inside the blackest cloud and feeling consumed by crushing, desperate sadness. Nothing and no one can make it better. There’s an overpowering feeling of hopelessness that is very hard to shake.
A few years ago, Steph and I had a wonderful holiday in the Hamptons. We’d had our picture taken by a friend and, when I saw it, I was horrified by how chunky I looked. I was probably over twelve stone. I immediately put myself on the 5:2 diet, and it worked, so much so that my weight dropped to just under eleven stone and ITV asked the office if I was okay. I decided that eleven stone was as far as I should go. In the process, I’d shrunk my stomach, so my appetite was much smaller and the weight was easy to maintain. Now, I couldn’t eat at all. I was in such a state of turmoil that I had no interest in food. Steph kept trying to get me to eat, but I couldn’t face anything. My weight dropped, and as it hit nine stone twelve pounds the This Morning viewers started to notice. I was getting Tweets from people asking if I was ill, or saying that if I was on a diet I should stop, because I’d lost too much weight.
Would coming out save me? Would it fix what was wrong in my head? I had absolutely no idea if that level of honesty and immediate, intense public scrutiny would just make it worse. If I thought about what the potential cost would be, it just plunged me further into crisis. One difficult evening when I was talking it all through with Steph, I said that I felt like I’d fallen into the crack between two lives. How could I possibly align the two? How could I understand the implications? I could see no way forward and no way back. It all seemed so huge and so frightening. She continually reassured me that, no matter what, she unconditionally loved me, and so did the girls. As with so many things in my life, I can worry and torture myself but, ultimately, I knew what I had to do. I had to come out. Whatever the cost.
Telling the girls almost made me sick. Steph and I couldn’t decide who should drive the car to tell them. Both our legs were like jelly. Steph drove in the end. They were extraordinary. My beautiful, wise, smart girls were suddenly, briefly, the parents as they leapt up to hug me and tell me it was going to be okay. I knew how much it hurt them, and still does, but I’m so bloody proud of them, and I’m so proud of how they have become fierce, protective lionesses around their mum.
Steph and I have always been careful with what we share about our lives. She is much more private than I am. Making this decision would attract a great deal of scrutiny and a great deal of that would be in her direction, and she was a totally innocent party. I couldn’t bear that I would hurt her in public.
We had long, painful conversations, kept nothing from each other, approached it from every angle, day after painful day, hour after distraught hour.
There was another person that I had to tell. I had to come out to my mum. I decided that if I drove to Cornwall, I couldn’t guarantee that my concentration levels would be high enough to make driving safe, so I asked Tony to drive me down. He must have wondered what was going on. We stopped in Newquay town centre and Tony picked up fish and chips from Flounders. I co
uldn’t go in, because this was a secret trip. I knocked on my mum’s door and walked in with the fish and chips, I’d obviously warned her I was coming, and she was deeply suspicious. She had cornered me earlier in the year and said she knew something was wrong because I wasn’t eating. I was so skinny and ‘seemed so sad’. I told her, when the time was right, I would tell her, but promised I wasn’t ill. We ate the fish and chips and chatted. Fistral Bay was shimmering in the sun. The beach looked beautiful. Out of her window I could see the car park where I had had my personally triumphant moment on the Roadshow all those years ago.
I told her. She looked at me and said:
‘Oh.’ There was a big pause, and she said, ‘I wasn’t expecting that. I thought you were going blind.’
‘Blind?! Why the hell would you think I was going blind?’
‘Your eye floaters bother you so much.’
I have really irritating floaters in each eye. They drive me mad, especially if they settle in the middle of my vision when I’m reading, or on a bright, sunny day. They are annoying, but harmless.
‘No, Mum, my eyes are fine.’
‘Well, darling, I don’t care about your sexuality, as long as the four of you are okay and can work your way through this. I love you no matter what.’
I looked at her and started to cry.
‘Would Dad be disappointed in me?’
‘Oh my goodness, darling. No, he wouldn’t. He would be so proud of you, just as he always was.’
The entire family reacted in the same way. I felt so incredibly lucky to have this support network around me. I know that many who come out are not so fortunate. More importantly, I knew that Steph and the girls would be smothered with love.
At Christmas, Steph’s wonderful mum, Gill, had looked at me as I was clearing up and wiping surfaces, and said with a smile, ‘You really are perfect, you know.’
I nearly burst into tears, but I just said, ‘That’s lovely to say, but no, Gill, I’m far from perfect.’
One of my greatest concerns was John, Steph’s dad. I adore him, and he’s pretty fond of me. I call him Captain because he used to both fly and sail. How does a father react when he finds out that his son-in-law has dropped such a bomb at the centre of his daughter’s life? He texted me when Steph told him.
‘I may be your pa-in-law, but think of me as your surrogate pa, and long may it continue! Briefed today. That’s a big load off your mind. As long as Steph’s okay, we don’t have a problem.’
I texted back, ‘Thank you so much, Captain. I’m so deeply, deeply sorry to disappoint you.’
‘Nothing to be sorry for, so cheer up,’ he replied.
At the precise moment Steph told her family (she decided that would be the best way), I was filming in Heathrow’s Terminal 2. I was recording a summer How to Spend It Well. As I delivered my links and conducted my interviews, my phone kept lighting up with the reactions from the family. That was a hard shoot. The programme never went out anyway. You can’t transmit a holiday show when everyone is in lockdown.
Paul, Daz and I also had many meetings. We had to decide on some kind of strategy. Unfortunately, something like this doesn’t just happen. The right people have to know at the right time. It is testament to all my friends that not one single hint of what was to happen ever got leaked.
There was never any question that I would do this any other way than on the This Morning sofa. I had to be among friends for that moment, I had to have Holly opposite me and I owed it to our loyal viewing family that they should be the first to hear me speak. Holly and I had lunch at Mark’s Club and sat outside on the terrace. It helped because she knows and cares for both me and Steph. We went through everything. What sort of impact would it have on my job? How would those that followed my career react? What about those who didn’t? Would This Morning be okay? Would I be damaged? Although all of these things concerned me, I was more concerned for Steph and the girls. The public reaction would be what it would be. Holly spent the afternoon reassuring me that everything would be okay.
It was that afternoon that the date was decided. I suggested a Thursday. We could start the show together and then I could leave and Holly could continue with someone else.
‘Absolutely not,’ was her adamant response.
She said that there was no chance that I would come out and then she would carry on without me!
‘We do this together, then we leave together.’ So it had to be a Friday. And the one that worked was Friday, 7 February. I hated that I had to schedule something of this magnitude like a meeting. If only it could be simpler. If only I could run away and not have to face this.
I had started a WhatsApp group called ‘The Event’. As it got closer and closer, I hired a PR company. I’ve never needed PR in my life, but I needed it now.
One of the men I most admire in my career is Martin Frizell, the editor of This Morning. He’s a gruff Scot but a softie at heart, and I trust him with my life. He is a brilliant editor, maverick but sensible. He’s been a journalist and broadcaster himself and he knows the game inside out. This Morning has shone under his leadership, as the National Television Awards prove. I called him into my dressing room to tell him. Paul was there and I asked Holly to come in and hold my hand. I told him.
‘Oh, thank fuck. Is that it? I thought you were dying.’
The reaction throughout ITV was the same, from our CEO Dame Carolyn McCall, through Head of Studios Kevin Lygo to Managing Director of Daytime Emma Gormley. They all scooped me up and told me they were with me. I began to feel that at least my career would be okay.
My brand partners all said they stood shoulder to shoulder with me. I was so bloody proud of them all and so enormously grateful.
The stage was set. Tomorrow I nuke my life.
On Friday, 7 February 2020, I kissed goodbye to Steph and the girls and got into Tony’s car. He was very confused. Why would I be going to Television Centre on a Friday? When I arrived, Paul was there, then Holly arrived. Kevin Lygo was there with the heavyweights of the ITV press department. Martin Frizell and Emma Gormley were there with big hugs of support. I would appear with Holly and then afterwards do one newspaper interview, and that would be it. No other comment. This book wasn’t in my head, but then neither was a lockdown. Kevin Lygo looked me in the eye and said:
‘Are you sure?’
‘I’m absolutely sure.’
‘Okay, that’s good. We’re very proud of you.’
Emily Page is my manager and part of my inner sanctum. She had of course been brought into the loop when I was ready to make my announcement and had been one of the founder members of ‘The Event’ WhatsApp group. She is always such a powerful source of kindness and support. As I looked at her smiling face, her eyes willing me on and telling me this was going to be okay, I felt such adoration for my team, always there, always supportive, always utterly loyal. How lucky I am.
Us four at FriendsFest.
Very few of the This Morning gang knew why I was there or what was happening. Next to be told were my ‘glam squad’, my devoted friends David and Suzie. They had known for a long time that I was in a mess and had put it all down to the negative press coverage that I’d received. They, too, were relieved that I wasn’t critically ill. Again, big hugs and those important words, ‘We’re right here with you.’ I went in to see Eamon and Ruth, who made me cry with their hugs and support. Suddenly, it became clear to them why there was a ten-minute ‘news’ item at the top of their show but they’d had no information as to what it was.
I had written two statements that were sitting in ‘Notes’ on my phone. At 9 a.m., I sent the first to all my friends, telling them what I was about to do. Andi Peters immediately texted back and made me laugh. He was in New York and asked if I was on The Michael McIntyre Show. Was this ‘Send to All?’ I texted back, saying no, it was real, and if it was ‘Send to All’, it was a pretty shit joke. The responses were instantly lovely. ‘We love you.’ ‘You have our full support.’ ‘We’re
proud of you.’
The second statement was ready to post on Instagram at 9.45 a.m. There was a lot of work going on behind the scenes. A newspaper journalist had been told that she ‘might want to come to Television Centre as something big was about to happen’. She was to be brought over to the studio as soon as I posted and could sit in the studio as Holly talked to me. When 9.45 ticked into view I was in a dressing room with Holly, David and Suzie. We all looked at each other. This was the ‘nuke’ moment. My right thumb would change my life and the lives of all those around me for ever. They watched my thumb. It pressed send. And that was it. It was done. The result was almost instantaneous. All our phones started pinging with news alerts: ‘Phillip Schofield comes out.’
We walked from the production offices up to the studio. By the time we got upstairs, everyone knew. The smiles and the ‘well dones’ were a huge help and steadied my nerves. Holly and I stood for a moment behind the scenes and had a final hug. ‘It will be okay,’ she reassured me. I turned to look at Paul and my This Morning family. About five minutes before the opening titles rolled we both walked on to the studio floor. Another hug from Eamon and Ruth, and then the two of us walked over to sit down. I was holding on to Holly like a ship in a tempest needs an anchor. Sitting on the other side of the sofa from my friend was so tough. When we have a nervous guest, I always say, ‘Keep looking into my eyes. You’ll see all the support you need. Just keep looking at me.’ I knew that’s what I had to do now. If I needed a handhold to cling on to, I just had to look into Holly’s eyes. Eamon and Ruth explained to the viewers what was happening and handed over to Holly.
Holly was incredible, faultless in every way, journalistically and as a friend. It was a tough line to walk and, as always, she walked it with style, compassion and class.
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