TODAY, Phillip Schofield is too scared to walk down the high street. Tomorrow, he may just be able to.
Unquestionably, in an astonishing 24 hours, the star’s incredibly raw, self-flagellating interview with The Sun has widely shifted public perception.
The conversation isn’t now so much about right or wrong — Phillip makes no bones of the fact he’s acted entirely inappropriately, severely hurting people in the process — it’s about a human being.
A fallible, damaged, lost, 61-year-old human being, desperately seeking atonement.
Right now, he feels he’s lost everything. Besides family, television was his everything.
He isn’t eating, he isn’t sleeping and he’s self-medicating with Southern Comfort.
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Unless he’s the greatest actor to have ever graced planet earth, Phillip is utterly broken.
He physically shakes when he talks. At times I had to lean forward to hear him, so softly spoken was he. He’s more bone than flesh and looked dead behind the eyes — a carcass of a being.
At times he couldn’t make eye contact. The shame is real — very, very real. Right now, no one hates Phillip Schofield more than Phillip Schofield.
But by speaking so candidly — this is a man with nothing to lose but also, crucially, nothing to gain — he’s reminded people the person at the centre of this storm is just that: a person.
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The witch-hunt on social media must stop. And slowly, finally, it seems to be.
As Piers Morgan said yesterday, the persecution — unless a crime has been committed — needs to end.
Now — as those on social media love to preach — is perhaps the time to #bekind.