I interviewed Phillip Schofield… unless he’s the greatest actor on earth he is utterly broken

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.

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.

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.