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In 1992, Piers Morgan wrote a life of Phillip Schofield. It’s a startling read
When a young Piers Morgan set out to write a biography of Phillip Schofield, at the height of the latter’s fame in the early 1990s, the star of stage and screen had no interest in being the subject of a book. “There’s nothing about my life that would be of remote interest to anyone,” Schofield told Morgan. “I’m nobody special.”
Morgan, then a columnist at The Sun, managed to persuade him to ditch the “ludicrous modesty” and To Dream a Dream: The Amazing Life of Phillip Schofield was published in 1992. Schofield had become a household name for presenting Going Live! on TV, hosting a Radio 1 programme and starring in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat on the West End. Morgan was just 27 when the book came out; Schofield was 30.
Reading the book now, more than 30 years after publication, is so jarring that it could cause whiplash. In the book’s foreword, Morgan writes that “this is not a warts-and-all exposé of Phillip Schofield. There is, as his family and friends will tell you, nothing to expose. It’s simply the story of someone who dreamed of being a star – and achieved his dream. And to use a cliché, it couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke”.
Yet Schofield was for certain harbouring a secret then – and went on to harbour more. Although he would marry a woman and have two daughters shortly after this book was written, he was gay. He would later repeatedly lie about having an affair with a male This Morning runner almost 40 years his junior, leading to his departure from the show he had presented for 20 years in 2023, and a stint in showbiz exile. He is now mounting a comeback and settling scores – with a level of bitchiness and verbal venom that has drawn astonished comment from across the media industry – on Cast Away, a Channel 5 series in which he is marooned on a Madagascan island.
Nobody knew any of this in 1992, and Schofield appears to have been a convincing liar. For three decades after Morgan described him as “one of the most genuinely nice guys in showbusiness”, Schofield, now 62, was one of TV’s golden boys. A stalwart presenter of This Morning, he also hosted Dancing On Ice, the British Soap Awards and even had his own game show, The Cube.
He seems to have pulled the wool over the eyes of Morgan, one of the highest-profile celebrity journalists of his generation. “One of the most laughable accusations in showbusiness is that Phillip Schofield might be gay,” Morgan writes.
“The rumours, which tend to haunt any unmarried TV personality who prefers not to show off his girlfriends in public, have dogged Phil on and off for years. But anyone who knows the handsome presenter treats them with the ridicule they deserve. For the truth is that Phil has hardly ever been without a girlfriend, making him one of the most eligible bachelors in Britain.
“Since he sneaked his first kiss at the age of five from a young lady called Susan, whom he chased into a giant Wendy House, Phil has pursued women with enthusiasm.”
Schofield speaks in cringeworthy terms about his “smouldering passion” for the ladies, and regales Morgan with the story about how he lost his virginity. “I was fifteen; no one forgets, do they? It happened in the sand dunes of Newquay beach. I remember the girl very well; her name began with L – but that’s all I’m saying. I still see her occasionally and don’t want to embarrass her. She knows that she was my first!”
In a later passage, about Schofield’s blossoming relationship with Stephanie Lowe, who was and remains his wife, Morgan writes that he might finally have found “the one” after a series of flings. “Friends reckon Phil may have met that woman in Stephanie. One thing is for sure – he definitely isn’t gay!!”
Schofield addressed the rumours of his sexuality head-on. “Because I have always guarded my private life very closely, these sort of rumours are bound to fly around,” he says. “But I’ve got one thing to say to anyone who says things like that – bullsh–t!”
Much of the book, a slim volume of 107 pages with a lot of photographs, involve Schofield moaning about how he was perceived as being too squeaky clean to be true. “It really gets to me sometimes that because I am not seen to behave badly in public there must be something wrong with me,” he moans. “It’s just very boring – the truth is that when I am not in the public eye I behave exactly like any other thirty-year-old bachelor. It’s just that I am very careful not to do anything that might cause a parent to think I am unsuitable to be a role model for their child.”
Morgan adds as an aside: “Friends of Phil’s confirm that he likes to get rip-roaringly drunk, has an eye for the ladies, and enjoys a good prank.”
In an attempt to look more like an exciting lad, Schofield talks about how he helped to tie a very drunk Peter Powell, the DJ, to Chelsea Bridge on his stag do before he married Anthea Turner. “If people knew the real me they would probably be horrified. I have had some extremely dodgy nights,” Schofield tells Morgan. “I’ve been so drunk that I’ve ended up sleeping on tube trains, crashing out in offices, on floors, in fact anywhere I fall over. I have got home sometimes and the next morning had absolutely no recollection of where I’d been or what I’d done or indeed how I got back. It’s quite worrying really, isn’t it!”
Schofield also admits to some frankly bizarre behaviour that it is hard to imagine any media-trained celebrity sharing today. Morgan describes him as a child chasing girls around and hitting them with a bamboo stick topped with dog mess, as well as pre-empting Mike Tyson and Evander Holyfield by biting off the ear of a friend’s pet rabbit.
“I still can’t believe I did that. I was very small and when the rabbit nibbled me, I decided to nibble him back,” Schofield says. “But I overdid it and bit half his ear off. Mum was furious. She hit me all the way home – my feet didn’t touch the ground, I was constantly in the air as she leathered me!”
In what may not be an unrelated matter, he says he also had not remained friends with any of his schoolmates.
To Dream a Dream is out of print. Second-hand copies are avaliable on eBay
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