Featured Image Credit: GB News / ITV
Topics: Phillip Schofield, Celebrity
Jess Hardiman
Eamonn Holmes has re-enacted the moment Phillip Schofield ‘fell down on his knees’ and told him he was gay, saying he and wife Ruth Langsford were ‘taken for fools’.
Holmes has been a particularly vocal critic of Schofield and his former co-presenter Holly Willoughby in the wake of the affair scandal.
He has now recalled the moment Schofield, 61, publicly announced he was gay in 2020, having released a statement on Instagram before discussing his news during a live segment on This Morning that Holmes and Langsford had been presenting.
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“Everyone I've spoken to have all been so supportive and loving and caring,” Schofield said at the time, before turning to Willoughby and saying: "The thing is, you know this has been bothering me for a very long time and I think everybody does these things at their own speed and their own time.”
He added: “All you can be in your life is honest with yourself. I was getting to the point where I didn't like myself as I was not being honest."
Holmes claims he had no advance warning about the bombshell that was coming, saying he received a phone call early that morning before being told by Schofield himself in the dressing room just moments before they went on air.
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Speaking about that day on GB News’ Dan Wootton Tonight, he explained: “He [Schofield] comes into our dressing room, and he falls down on his knees, the acting is amazing, he falls down on his knees crying.
“I said to him, ‘What's the matter? What's the matter?’"
Schofield told him: “I’m gay!”, to which Holmes then replied: "Is that all? What is this?"
He added: “I first thought he killed a child or something. I stood him up, I pulled him up and I said, ‘What are you talking about? So you're gay’.
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“And that tied into a lot of things that, you know, you may have heard, and I think anybody to be imprisoned in a life that isn't true to them would be totally wrong.
“We were very supportive, Ruth hugged him and we said, ‘Look, we'll stand by you, it’s all ok’.
“I mean, it wouldn't enter our minds that the man would have been discriminated against for being gay? So we were very, very supportive of that.”
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Holmes went on to say that he and his wife were ‘taken for fools’ during the 'choreographed' live segment, saying he was 'beginning to feel bad vibes'.
"So I don't say anything in the opener,” he said.
“Ruth says what she has to say, then it goes to those two in their choreographed way.
"You know how false they are, I'm sure they've rehearsed it for days as to what they're going to say and do - who was going to hug."
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Holmes added: "It's been planned for some time. And it then materialises obviously all is not what it seems.
"Because he has obviously done a deal with the newspaper to give a version of what the newspaper knew, and it was all a bit weird."