By Lucy Caulkett-
Sarah Ferguson has defended Phillip Schofield after he resigned from This Morning over his affair with a runner on the show whom the television presenter has known since he was 15 years of age.
Her defence of the fallen television star comes after Schofield admitted lying to the Daily, his co host, Holly Willoughby, and his family, over his infidelity with a young runner boy,on the ITV morning show, whose identity has been jointly kept anonymous by the British Press to protect his vulnerability.
Speaking of massive bullying to the point of extermination of Fergusom said:
‘I don’t believe that anybody has that right to judge and exterminate a person’s own beliefs.’
The mother-of-two then went on to urge viewers to try and reserve their judgement.
She continued: ‘We all have failings […] Could everyone please take a beat or make a cup of tea before you judge another human being without knowing all the facts?
‘We don’t know the facts. We certainly don’t know what people get up to.’
Sarah Jane Thomson then added: ‘The problem is, when you’re in the public eye, any failing you make is there to be talked about and the rest of us don’t have that.
‘We don’t have that deep examining of where we’ve gone wrong and then it’s reflected over and over and over.’
The former presenter, who has established a career on television for decades. quit the ITV daytime show after it emerged he and and Holly Willoughby were undergoing a strained relationship, and the two were not talking.
Days later, he sensationally resigned from all his ITV projects, after revealing he had relationship with his younger colleague while still with his wife Stephanie Lowe.
Schofield was heavily criticised for the series of lies he admitted telling, with the knowledge of his sexual liaison with the young man now public knowledge he was forced to reveal at his expense. Schofield later had to admit apologising to his daughter whom he had also lied to, then later expressing fear to come out of his home, in case he was subjected to bullish atatcks from the public.
Well known stars like Rupert Everett, have blasted the coverage as ‘homophobic’ and ‘outrageous’, with Sarah, 63, the latest to defend the former The Cube host.
On her podcast Tea Talks with businesswoman Sarah Jane Thomson, the duo discussed the role of social media in the Schofield saga, with the royal agreeing it was like a ‘huge game of Chinese whispers’, branding it ‘the court of public opinion.’
As a result, the mother-of-two argued, it generates ‘massive bullying to the point of extermination of a soul.’
‘I don’t believe that anybody has that right to judge and exterminate a person’s own beliefs,’ she continued.
Sarah then urged social media users to reserve their judgment, adding: ‘We all have failings.’
She continued: ‘Could everyone please take a beat or make a cup of tea before you judge another human being without knowing all the facts?
‘We don’t know the facts. We certainly don’t know what people get up to.’
The former wife of Prince Andrew went on to agree with Jeremy Clarkson’s assessment that Phillip had been a victim of a ‘witch hunt’ and homophobia.
Schofield publicly apologised to the Daily Mail for misleading them through his lawyer, whohe also misled about a story which they wanted to write about me a few days ago.
‘The first thing I want to say is: I am deeply sorry for having lied to them, and to many others about a relationship that I had with someone working on This Morning. I did have a consensual on-off relationship with a younger male colleague at This Morning.
‘Contrary to speculation, whilst I met the man when he was a teenager and was asked to help him to get into television, it was only after he started to work on the show that it became more than just a friendship. That relationship was unwise, but not illegal. It is now over.
‘When I chose to come out I did so entirely for my own wellbeing. Nobody “forced” me out. Neither I nor anyone else, to my knowledge, has ever issued an injunction, super or otherwise, about my relationship with this colleague, he was never moved on or sacked by or because of me. In an effort to protect my ex-colleague I haven’t been truthful about the relationship.
‘But my recent, unrelated, departure from This Morning fuelled speculation and raised questions which have been impacting him, so for his sake it is important for me to be honest now.
‘I am painfully conscious that I have lied to my employers at ITV, to my colleagues and friends, to my agents, to the media and therefore the public and most importantly of all to my family. I am so very, very sorry, as I am for having been unfaithful to my wife.
‘I have therefore decided to step down from the British Soap Awards, my last public commitment, and am resigning from ITV with immediate effect expressing my immense gratitude to them for all the amazing opportunities that they have given me.
‘I will reflect on my very bad judgment in both participating in the relationship and then lying about it. To protect his privacy, I am not naming this individual and my deepest wish is that both he and his family can now move on with their lives free from further intrusion, and that this statement will enable them to do so.
‘I ask the media now to respect their privacy. They have done nothing wrong, and I ask that their privacy should be respected.’
The Top Gear presenter wrote in The Sunday Times that he found the attention on Phillip ‘weird’, pointing out we only ‘casually roll our eyes’ over Leonardo DiCaprio’s girlfriends, who famously are never over the age of 25.
LGBT+ rights campaigner Peter Tatchell recently said that the outrage against Schofield’s affair has ‘more than a whiff of homophobia’ to it