Phillip Schofield has come out as gay

[catinb0oots]

Blimey. Married for 27 years.

@JuanSheetIsPlenty 😂

I feel for him and his family and hope they find peace .
It’s a shame , however , that Philip Schofield's political leanings support intolerance and removal of resources that support the LGBTQ community .
Philip Schofield dismissed one party leader , ridiculing him on live television , then spent the same amount of time fawning over the other one - that one being a homophobe and a racist.

Homophobia was/remains bad and is shit.

That doesn’t excuse lying to someone in a relationship.

When PS was first on tv early 90s I had a gay friend who had lived in the same town as him growing up. He swore to me PS was gay (I didn’t believe him!) and had been very much on the local gay scene and been in different relationships. He must have been fully living his life as a gay man at this point, which says to me this is not just some internal struggle and realisation like he’s painting it.
I suspect he shelved it all for his tv career as a lot of people would have had to do at the time, just a shame his poor wife got taken along for the ride.

I thought in showbusiness it was more likely to be gay.

I would say PS has peaked in his career, so why not get himself some extra attention now. He will be given more work even though they might rather have someone else. He will have to get it otherwise he's being discriminated against for being gay. He's obviously become someone who gets what they want, so he gone for the full package and come out. Very contrived in my opinion.

Would love to hear the wives version. I know it's not classy to kiss and tell, but I'd like to hear her thoughts and what she knew. He's probably got her to sign a non disclosure agreement.

One of my best friends is a gay man. He was a serving police officer in the late 1990s when he came out. The harassment he got was severe. He was punched by his so called "best friend" who then cut contact with him entirely. His father disowned him. He stuck out the work harassment for a while but eventually had to quit the Force, which I think he still is sad about as he loved his job, but his colleagues would not accept him.

He wasn't married, but he was engaged to a woman until a year or so before he came out. He said that when he got engaged he did so partly because he was desperate to not be gay. He loved the woman, he found her beautiful and she was a great person he loved being with and on some level he wanted to believe that if he pushed the relationship forward then something would change inside him. He ended the relationship because he realized it wouldn't but I think still sometimes feels a sense of loss for the life he wanted - a career in the police, a conventional and accepted family life, children etc. I don't think the 90s were this haven of gay acceptance that a lot of posters on here seem to think they were. And I think coming to terms with your sexuality and what it means can be complex and difficult. Real lack of compassion being shown here (and some blatant homophobia).

blimey, first Ricky Martin now Schofield.....

God, why is this even news. Why does someone’s sexuality warrant a BBC breaking news alert on my phone?! Ridiculous.

If anyone listened to his interview with Holly, he said he has wrestled with admitting to himself that he is gay- it hardly sounds like he has been openly gay with his family and media buddys all along and just decided to come out to the public now. This idea that they have known in the industry for decades sounds like shite to me. It sounds more like he's not even allowed himself to believe he's gay until fairly recently. Why else would someone go and get married and have kids in this day and age if they knew they weren't straight. Sexuality is not cut and dried or black and white. It can develop and change through the years- for some I guess there's a line and they are walking on and it takes a while to decide which side they are going to land.

And as for the feud between Ruth and Phil- it's all bollocks I say- look at the way Ruth winks at him during the Bafta's speech and the way she touches him when they sit down on this morning after his interview with Holly. too many people see what the media tells them to see instead of what they see with their own eyes.

Apart from saying ' who?' My 22 year old son just shrugged when I mentioned it to him! He has many gay, bi, transsexual straight friends and it's all accepted and not even remarked on most of the time.
That generation seem to be more at ease with most things I think (which is good) and more likely to 'come out 'younger as well.

There were famous gay people in the 80s, but it was an alternative scene and not compatible with being a wholesome Children's BBC presenter. It is easy to forget how rapidly there has been a change in mainstream acceptance of not being heterosexual (and married, 2.4 children...)

In the 90s, the age for homosexual relationships was equalised from 18 to 16 at the end of the decade. PSHE was focused only on heterosexual relationships. Equality was moving in the right direction but we still weren't there yet for civil partnerships and marriage which were still some years off.

The death sentence of HIV/ AIDS tainted the gay community until better treatments and more understanding of the conditions became avaliable.

I can understand why people have been in denial of their sexuality to themselves and their families, let alone in professions dependent on public opinion.

Things seem much better for young people to explore their sexuality with much less heartache and denial along the way (for all affected), so hopefully in the future there won't be a need for publicly coming out later on life as PS has done.

I don't understand why you would feel more sorry for his wife and daughters then for him. Yes it's an awful situation all round but he's the one who felt he had to hide his true sexuality and that must have tormented him, in addition to that guilt of lying to his family.

Can we really not give men even an inch on mumsnet?

@Floribundance Thanks. In the 1990s most employers began to put in place employment policies that did protect lesbian and gay employees. So you could take employers to court on the basis of not following their own policies. In the 80s it was only the very left-wing employers who tended to have these.

I am not defending Schofield. I do not think he was brave. Brave would have been coming out in the 80's. But he would not have had a career as a kids TV presenter.

In Scotland sex between men was only legalised in 1981. Things have changed very quickly.

’ Why does someone’s sexuality warrant a BBC breaking news alert on my phone?! Ridiculous.’

Because they’ve used up every stock image of people in masks or coughing and the graphics department need a break from contagion maps?

Because he chose to lie and deceive everyone, they didn't.

Karen

My brother's 50 and I can remember him taking in a friend who had been thrown out.for.being gay.

A lot of people forget that gay.men up.until not all that long ago were seen as perverse and a threat to young boys. There are men alive today who until recently still had criminal records just because of their sexuality.........imagine carrying that shame ?

@fuckitywhy how do you know this? I'm sure his wife has known for a very long time.

I don’t have any feeling about him either way but as a teenager in the 90s I know that there was still a huge amount of prejudice. I remember some of the comments in the Lords during the repeal of section 28 - 2003 in England and Wales.

I don't understand why you would feel more sorry for his wife and daughters then for him. Yes it's an awful situation all round but he's the one who felt he had to hide his true sexuality and that must have tormented him, in addition to that guilt of lying to his family.

You can live a lie all you want but don’t make someone else’s life a lie as well. His wife deserves all the sympathy until she releases a statement saying she’s known he was gay all along. Which I doubt.

@FoamingAtTheUterus I used to volunteer at our local women's centre in the 1990's. They had a get together for lesbians on Christmas Day, because so many lesbians had been disowned by their families.
I also met there a lesbian who told me she was the first women in Britain who was an out lesbian and did not lose her kids in a custody case for being a lesbian. She told me before that point if a woman had kids with a man and he took her to court for custody, all he had to do was prove she was a lesbian and she would lose custody.

Interesting take on it from someone on Twitter, referring to his wife:

"She's known he was gay before they married. She's his manager. She's kept the papers quiet for years about #schofe and his "encounters". Now no one, including Ruth, dare criticise #schofield for fear of being called #homophobic. His wife is protecting his brand and her %"

Regarding Dale Winton...
This Morning got a lot of flack because they hardly mentioned Dale Winton's death on the show, just a quick 2 min mention. Wonder if that was deliberate as he was one of Pip's boyfriends?

https://www.standard.co.uk/stayingin/tvfilm/this-is-disgusting-holly-willoughby-and-phillip-schofield-slammed-for-rushed-dale-winton-tribute-a3818536.html

Oh FGS! What's with MN and the 'evil Phillip Schofield" brigade- it's bloody weird- he's perfectly likeable and I've never met anyone in real life who thinks otherwise.

Well what about mr tumble he must be gay too? But is it acceptable now to be a gay Childrens presenter or not seen as Wholesome? Personally I don't think peoples private lives matter.

@HopeYouStepOnALego that’s what my industry friend who knew PS and knew he was gay suggested too. I refused to believe it at the time.