Philip Schofield interview on BBC News/iplayer now.

[JeandeServiette]

Anyone else watching?

I wasn't supposed to be up this early but what the heck.

This I agree with. I would hate to hound someone to their death.

As long as no grooming did take place, yes it's questionable but he didn't kill anyone. I don't wish to make someone feel like caroline flack did. I think it should probably be left now after watching the whole interview.

He's no longer in employment. He's paid for his lies. Probably best to leave the man and his family be.

I also picked up on the emphasis on "It was consensual". Ok, so you build yourself up as a superhero and five years of online grooming culminates in sex with a person about a third of your age whom you conditioned since childhood?

Fourteen/fifteen is also a common age for grooming of young boys to begin. i know because a pervert tried to begin on my own DC. They never got as far as doing anything physical but I intercepted it at the stage when they were encouraging secrecy from parents and saying weird things (school staff member). When the shit hit the fan, did the school with their inch thick safeguarding policy do anything to properly hold him to account? Did they heck. They covered their own arses and claimed my DC had imagined it all.

This culture is not going to change if we start giving vile scumbags the benefit of the doubt.

Very odd.
I just don't think what has the potential to come out is out?
On one hand he is saying that it was consensual, a fling, on the other the biggest mistake of his life?
Mentioning Caroline flack was a particularly manipulative move imo, almost threatening suicide to the public
The media have been awful, but I don't believe the poor me display

The longer this keeps playing out in the.media and on social media, the worse it must be for the young man involved. What PS did was extremely creepy, an abuse of his position and very, very questionable, but it was legally consensual.

The feasting on the corpse of it all is really unpleasant. I get the feeling people are itching for more dirt on PS and are secretly hoping it is of the underage sort.

Okay so this is why I think grooming is so prolific, people actually think that someone groomed as a child is going to be both aware what is happening or happened to them, and that they are capable or even responsible for identifying and reporting it. It is not how it works. Its actually up to the adults around them to identify the behaviour and call it out. Only when people did that here, they were silenced. If an adult strikes up a 'friendship' with a child, that right there is your first red flag. I do not have 15 year old friends, my husband doesn't, nobody I know our age does or thinks it is appropriate. My training has taught me that adults who do, either do not understand safeguarding or are predatory. Adults chatting to children online is another ed flag, and that happened here too.

If that friendship turns sexual when the child reaches maturity, that is evidence of grooming.

I am always shocked that parents do not see what is right in front of them. Our children suffer because of your inability to admit what you can see. Grooming is sinister because it looks like friendly behaviour, but if we all put ourselves in the position of the adult in question, and honestly ask yourselves, is this something I would do? Or: Would I want a much older rich man chatting to my child online, getting them a job and then having sex with them???

Something very dodgy has gone on. This will not end well.

If the debate is closed down, that is not going to help MM much. PS has fucked up his life and he needs to get professional help to come to terms with it. He is no longer a child but an adult with a damaged life.

There may be a part of him that still thinks he was in control or he was complicit or to blame. If it is swept under the carpet then he will never realise that none of this "consent" BS he has been fed by PS ever applied here. Once he gets that then he will want to tear up the NDA and say what he needs to say in order to define it for himself and work through the grief and betrayal.

@Iwantcakeeveryday Spot on!

was this a casting couch scenario
i believe it was

The naivety of some of the posters on this thread is astonishing. PS had repeatedly lied, admits he has repeatedly lied. Why would anyone believe a word of what he said in that interview?

I think Phil is smoothing out some of the details. He didn't give straight answers at points. Really not a great interview.

^Did you flirt over twitter?
Not to my knowledge/recollection. ^

Yes I noticed that as well. He was very unclear about how he came to be following him on Twitter. He said something blurred like “I was asked to follow him”. Asked by whom? MM? Someone else? No one?

Exactly... especially with messages for instance, where they e probably been deleted.

I also thought it was off that he described the sex as legal (16+) rather than just an adult relationship but maybe I'm reading too much into it. Seems very clinical and legal though.

@Flunkey and @Namechange666 I totally agree with everything you both said. PS has lost almost everything now and I don't want to see him commit suicide. I'm certainly no fan of his and if he has groomed this young man or had underage sex with him or anyone else, then there should be an official police investigation and he should be punished through the courts. I think the press and social media should leave him alone now, unless he is charged and found guilty of a crime. From the evidence so far it seems he has extremely questionable morals but if that is all he is guilty of and if he hasn't actually committed a crime then I think, having lost his job and his reputation, he should now be left alone.

Caroline Flack is now being used as a get out of jail card by people who can't take responsibility for their own actions, and their supporters.

Unless his flat-for-sale is forensically tested for semen splashes on the ceiling which can be dated, then the proof of his 'innocence' is basically his word against the anecdotal evidence of many people who spent a huge amount of time around him and knew that something fishy was going on. There are things we will never know because they were more concerned with protecting their own financial stability rather than whistleblowing on the top dog and taking the consequences..

That would be for his family, his employers and the boy (and possibly his family) to decide. PS has lost his job and that should be that.

He does not deserve this ongoing public witch hunt.

How can someone who has admitted he lied and lied about lying, who has, by all reports, used his influence to bully others and cancel those he didn’t want around him, be allowed to use the media to try to excuse himself.

However you frame it, the relationship, whatever it was, was u equal and certainly more than ‘unwise’. I agree with Nebulae; the naivety is alarming.

I cannot believe that the young man was the only one who was in a similar position.

I hope he never returns to any TV screen. Heads should roll at ITV. This must have been a cover up for years.

Wish he would disappear and HW too, is there no other news?

Stop describing public reaction to this as a 'witch-hunt'. You clearly do not know what that means. He has admitted to meeting him at 15, chatting online, getting him a job when he reached adulthood and having sexual relations when he worked for him. He admits he lied about it, he's lied with his two public statements about it contradicting each other as well. This is classic grooming and the public are allowed to comment and ask their employers for answers when it is a public person whose brand was built on him being a 'nice family guy', and especially because Philip himself judged an awful lot of guests on his show. I have seen him behave horribly to people and those people go on to struggle with the public reaction. Not once has Schofield ever made a public statement on behalf of any of them. Kerry Katona is just one.

Also, its been a week. Not a year or two. So the reaction is proportionate, especially as he has just done another ill- advised interview.

didn’t any of these entitled, abusive, partial-to-young-people idiots learn from Prince Andrew?

Indeed. And what is infuriating me is that people are comparing his situation/ suicide threat to Caroline Flack!

My gay ex was the same as Schofield in coming out after many years of marriage although he cheated with men of his own age(AFAIK). Schofield is all me, me, me - can he not think about how his wife and daughters feel the more he prolongs his protestations? Especially for threatening suicide like he is doing.

My daughters accepted their father was gay when he finally told the truth but never the lies and his treatment of me Our family was destroyed because of them. Meanwhile he has completely disappeared from our lives. Schofield would do well to disappear too.

Well said @Iwantcakeeveryday

He’s threatening suicide to get the press and public off his back, and people are falling for this manipulative move.

Personally, I think we should be sending a mental health team around, to certify him. Maybe a stint in a mental health unit, not that I believe him for a second, but if he’s prepared to state he is suicidal on National TV then maybe that’s where he should be.