The Deception Around Phillip Schofield

An analysis of the words used in a very British scandal.

We have our issues here in the UK. There’s a cost of living crisis, the majority of our public services are in dire need of change and all the other problems that impact on the lives of the public.

However, for the last couple of weeks, our media headlines have been dominated by events surrounding a little watched daytime TV show.

One of the presenters of the show, Phillip Schofield, quit citing mistakes he made with around a former employee on the show. That led to a barrage of innuendo and stories hinting there is more to the story than meets the eye.

At first, this all took place via carefully crafted statements from Schofield and ITV, the company which makes the show. There’s not much in those for a word analyst like me. These statements are rarely revealing, having been rewritten many times until they are word-perfect AND approved by the lawyers.

As the story became bigger, more and more people made statements and gave interviews. At this point, I believe there’s a lot to learn from what’s being said.

It started for me, with an Instagram statement from Holly Willoughby, Schofield’s co-presenter on This Morning, the show in question. It looked like this.

Reading it now, I can see how distant Holly is making the allegations. She refers to them as “this relationship”, “this was true”, “it was not” and “this was a lie”. She doesn’t expand on what she means by “this” or “it”.

As I often say, this doesn’t mean she’s deceiving us. It does indicate a potential wish for her to keep her distance from the allegations. There is some potential for deception, though. By not being specific on what she is referring to, it gives her some wriggle room later if she’s found out to have known quite a bit about this story. If her statement is held against her, she can say “when I said “this” I meant... (something else)”.

The line that got me was ‘I asked Phil directly if this was true and was told it was not”. I note she tells us that she asks Phil if the reports were true, she doesn’t directly say it was Phil who informed her that they weren’t true. She only states that someone or some entity unspecified told her it wasn’t true.

As the story unfolds over the days, weeks and months, I’d keep an eye on that one.

Last week, Schofield appeared on the BBC. It’s a ten-minute interview, where it feels like he’s giving his side of the story, following a lot of mud slinging from others. You can watch it here: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-65775251

Here are only a couple of things I noticed.

Q: How are you?

Schofield: I think I understand how Caroline Flack felt.

(Very long pause).

Last week... if my daughters hadn’t been there... then I wouldn’t be here. And they’ve... guarded me... um... and won’t let me out of their sight.

It’s like a weird numbness. I know that’s a selfish point of view ... but you come to a point... where you just think, ‘how much are you supposed to take?’

If... all of those people... that write all of that stuff ... do they ever think.. that there’s actually a person at the other end? And so... here I am...

Firstly, credit to the interviewer for keeping quiet and allowing the long pauses to build. That silence gets much more revealing answers.

My opinion is that this isn’t a fully honest answer. Schofield is asked how he is, and he doesn’t tell us (I’ll show why next). Instead, he mentions events and then moves the subject on from how he is, to his negative views on the people writing things about him.

This shows to me that Schofield came to the interview with a pre-planned agenda. He would rather not elaborate on his feelings, he wanted to paint his “enemies” in a bad light.

How does he avoid his feelings? Well, he’s asked how he feels and he says he now thinks he knows how someone else felt. That’s not a direct answer.

I would rather not belittle how he feels, it’s undeniable he won’t be feeling happy, but when he talks about not being “here”, he doesn’t explain what “here” means. Alive? London? Giving and interview? At the point where he wants to fight back?

We can guess, but we don’t truly know because he doesn’t say.

There’s more distance from his true feelings when he says, “you come to a point... where you just think ‘how much are you supposed to take?’”. He doesn’t talk about how he feels by using ownership pronouns such as “I” and “me”. He tells us what “you” think.

One answer in and I feel like I have a man here who has an agenda for this interview and it is to portray how unhappy others have made him. Only, he doesn’t seem to have the words to realistically describe that. Why would that be?

There’s lots more to the interview, but I want to focus on this bit:

Q: Where did you first meet this young man in question, what were the circumstances?

Schofield: I was invited, by a friend of mine to go and open a drama school. And that’s where the picture was taken. Um... whether it was immediately or sometime after, he said ‘will you (um).. will you follow him on Twitter’ because he’s a fan so I said ‘yeah, sure, no problem’ which is what I did.

Again, Schofield doesn’t directly answer the question. Yes, he does say where he first met the man, and the circumstances, but adds in more information that he wasn’t asked for. The photo, the Twitter follow.

Mentioning these areas, even though he wasn’t asked about them, suggests they are important to Schofield. That could be because they are top priory in his mind for some reason and he can’t help to mention them, or that he wants to make sure he gets across these key parts to his story.

Also mentioned, not relevant to the question, but seemingly significant to Schofield, is when he was asked to follow the man on Twitter “immediately or sometime after”. Why does that matter to him that he wishes to mention it and show us he can’t recall when it was? The “um” in the middle of the quote, as Schofield tried to find the right words, makes me question if this follow on Twitter truly was at the request of his friend.

Q: And he was 15 at the time...

Schofield: Yeah... but I follow... I follow over 11,300 people and all the time I’ve been on Twitter there’s never been any whiff of impropriety.

Once again, Schofield comes up with an answer that doesn’t match the question. After confirming that the man was 15 at the time, he then gives us his Twitter stats (irrelevant) and says no one has suspected he was improper. (Note, that is very different from saying “at no time did i behave improperly).

Those slinging mud at Schofield don’t come out of this story much better. Here’s Schofield’s former colleague Eamonn Holmes speaking about his time on the TV show:

Q: What did you know about it before that night at the National Television Awards?

Holmes: The only thing I-I ever knew was (takes on the persona of a gossip) ‘oh they’re very close’, ‘oh Phillip’s his boyfriend...’ whatever. The lad would never admit anything like that to us. We never overly asked, but what I do know is he would particularly seek comfort, you know... he would phone often.

Here I believe Holmes wants us to think that other people were gossiping about Schofield and the man. However, similar to Schofield, he doesn’t directly say that in his words. He doesn’t even say there was gossip, he implies it with his tone of voice, but doesn’t say who was gossiping. It’s possible it was him!

Holmes says, “we never overly asked”. Why “overly”? Well, that states that they (Holmes and his wife who also worked on the show) did ask, just not in a way Holmes believes is “overly” asking.

Holmes also says the man would seek comfort by phoning often. This suggests to me that the truthful answer to “what did you know about it” is a lot more than he is stating here.

Finally, another to have a go at Schofield is Carol McGiffin, who used to present Loose Women, another ITV daytime show. Here’s a quote from her:

I don't know anybody who's actually ever said out loud that they really like Phillip. I don't think he was liked by any of the Loose Women, I never heard anybody there say that they actually like him and no one ever really had a good word for him.

Can you spot it? The headline says, “none of the Loose Women like Phillip Schofield” however McGiffin’s words are actually very different.

She doesn’t say that she knows that others on her show didn’t like him. Directly, she says she doesn’t know anyone who said they liked him. She only says she doesn’t “think he was liked”, not that she knows for sure.

Finally, “no one ever really had a good word” is qualified by “really”. In other words, it’s possible there were good words around Schofield, just not very effusive ones.

Conclusion

There’s not a lot groundbreaking in these conclusions. However, I thought the statements were a good look at how, if you study the words being said, you’ll learn a lot more than your first impression may show you.

In my opinion:

- Schofield isn’t as sad as he’d like us to think and wants some kind of “revenge” on those bad-mouthing him

- He realises he may have acted improperly at times

- Eamonn Holmes knew a lot more about the situation than he says he did.

- Others are jumping on the bandwagon to throw mud at Schofield when they don’t have much mud to throw