Final night time Eamonn Holmes informed me that taxis ‘paid by ITV’ would ferry married Phillip Schofield’s a lot youthful male colleague and secret lover from his London residence to the This Morning studios after their Thursday night time ‘playtime’ collectively.
What was a very jaw dropping revelation from the legendary presenter to the general public was not a shock for these working inside ITV Daytime as they’ve identified for a few years in regards to the sordid particulars of the affair with {the teenager} 30 years Schofe’s junior, who he first met when he was 15 and helped safe a job on the legendary present.
When their relationship ended, he was moved from This Morning to Free Girls in an unprecedented transfer ITV tried to elucidate away as a ‘promotion’.
In my surprising interview, Eamonn additionally accused ITV of being accountable for a ‘complete cowl up’ of the scandal that now threatens to engulf the nation’s largest business broadcaster.
However, as senior executives at ITV cling on to their jobs, there may be rising stress on them to disclose precisely who knew what and when, and why the investigation they declare to have launched in early 2020 did not uncover the reality.
DAN WOOTTON:Â Final night time Eamonn Holmes informed me that taxis ‘paid by ITV’ would ferry married Phillip Schofield’s a lot youthful male colleague and secret lover from his London residence to the This Morning studios after their Thursday night time ‘playtime’ collectively
DAN WOOTTON:Â In my surprising interview, Eamonn additionally accused ITV of being accountable for a ‘complete cowl up’ of the scandal that now threatens to engulf the nation’s largest business broadcaster
ITV’s uber woke chief government Carolyn McCall has refused to remark publicly, as an alternative hiding behind company statements suggesting that she swallowed the apparent lies that Schofield now admits he informed his bosses.
However I’ve obtained a doubtlessly important electronic mail despatched 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 employees member who had since left the present, it demanded an investigation into what they feared was an abuse of energy by Schofield, suggesting on the very least he ought to be suspended from the programme whereas the widespread allegations have been seemed into.
I’ve agreed to not title the employees member, however can reveal they’d no private animosity in the direction of Phillip, who was not concerned of their choice to go away.
The e-mail to McCall and Bellamy learn partially: ‘With the present rumours and accusations swirling round about Phillip Schofield…why is he nonetheless on our screens? Why have ITV not suspended him pending an inside inquiry?
DAN WOOTTON:Â I’ve obtained a doubtlessly important electronic mail despatched to McCall and Julian Bellamy, the managing director of ITV Studios, which makes This Morning, on February 10, 2020
‘I might have thought nowadays {that a} mainstream broadcaster equivalent to ITV must be seen to be doing all it might to take care of points like this, discover out the place the reality lies and, within the meantime, droop those that the rumours concern?’
As well as, the ex-This Morning employees member supplied McCall and Bellamy with a hyperlink to a YouTube video, which now has almost two million views, detailing the historical past of the connection between Schofield and his younger colleague, together with purported social media contact between the pair and a variety of images of them collectively socially and at work at ITV.
The previous employees member concluded the e-mail: ‘Come on ITV – it is time to take motion and do the accountable factor.’
Neither McCall or Bellamy had the courtesy to answer the e-mail, prompting the ex-staffer to ship a number of additional messages, which have been additionally ignored.
One learn: ‘I discover this all frankly disgusting.’
On the weekend, ITV claimed it had launched an investigation into the improper relationship between Schofield and the younger producer in early 2020, though I had first gone to the corporate with particulars of the story in November 2019, which they dismissed as ‘malicious gossip’.
In a problematic twist for ITV, nevertheless, Schofield’s former lover is believed to have denied he was ever questioned as a part of the so-called inside investigation.
At this time, I requested ITV’s press workplace – which Holmes branded the ‘ministry of lies’ in my GB Information interview final night time – in regards to the emails despatched to McCall and Bellamy and whether or not they have been what prompted the failed investigation.
They refused to remark and as an alternative referred me to a earlier assertion that learn: ‘ITV can verify that when rumours of a relationship between Phillip Schofield and an worker of ITV first started to flow into in early 2020 ITV investigated.’
However this new electronic mail makes it more and more arduous for McCall to distance herself from the scandal.
After all, she might declare that she did not learn the e-mail or selected to disregard its contents, given the sender was not an ITV employee.
However for an government who has beforehand prided herself with how she loves being on the manufacturing unit room flooring along with her colleagues getting her arms soiled, it’s turning into more and more arduous to consider she was unaware of the allegations in opposition to Schofield.
DAN WOOTTON:Â ITV’s uber woke chief government Carolyn McCall has refused to remark publicly, as an alternative hiding behind company statements suggesting that she swallowed the apparent lies that Schofield now admits he informed his bosses
Bear in mind, eight ITV family names complained to me about what was happening again in 2019.
A livid Free Girls star informed me: ‘We should not be having to take care of Phillip’s tousled state of affairs. We love (the younger employee) however he is very troubled now. What if he cannot cope?’
Or what in regards to the Nationwide Tv Awards in January 2020, the place MailOnline has immediately revealed footage of the younger lover subsequent to Holly Willoughby, though Phillip’s spouse was in attendance on the occasion.Â
What occurred that night time was the speak of ITV and inside days Phillip can be tearfully popping out as homosexual to Holly on the couch.
After all, McCall’s silence over this rising scandal on her watch is especially galling given the brutality she has proven relating to shelling out with excessive profile expertise who break from her woke world view.
Piers Morgan, Jeremy Kyle, Carol McGiffin, Jeremy Clarkson and, in fact, Eamonn have all discovered themselves surplus to necessities for questioning the narrative round her pal Meghan Markle or the Covid pandemic.
But her firm appeared to behave in a wilfully blind method when it got here to the poisonous setting at its golden goose This Morning.
However as Eamonn tells me within the second a part of my interview broadcasting tonight on GB Information: ‘We’re at a stage when ITV and their share worth would have dipped and cash talks. You have to look how she’s operating the station; what she permits to occur.’
As a publicly listed firm, McCall owes ITV shareholders an evidence about what actually occurred.
The reality, this time; not the saccharin fairytale Schofield provided up on the couch to an unsuspecting British public.
