Holly Willoughby’s relationship with Phillip Schofield broke down irretrievably after she discovered what his brother had told him about engaging in a sex act with a boy, can reveal.
The extent of the former This Morning presenters’ bitter feud has been exposed since Phil made his TV comeback in Channel 5 series Cast Away, in which he referred to Holly as ‘one of the three s***s of showbiz’.
The disgraced host has accused Holly of ‘betrayal’ after suggesting she helped to orchestrate his departure from the ITV show because they thought his brother’s trial and Phillip’s affair with a young showrunner were both bad for her ‘brand’.
But can reveal the real reason why Holly chose to cut ties with Phillip – she was outraged by the evidence from his brother’s trial.
Schofield had made a written statement to the court when his brother Timothy was accused of sexually abusing a vulnerable teenage boy.
And Holly was left ‘flabbergasted’ when the court heard what Phillip knew a month before his brother was arrested.
The abuse came to the attention of police when the victim confided in a counsellor who then reported what he had been told, triggering Timothy’s arrest and subsequent 12-jail sentence after he was found guilty in May last year.
After his brother called him in an ‘agitated and upset state’, Phillip invited him to his home in London, where they spent several hours talking and ate a meal together in September 2021.
In a written statement, Schofield recalled for the court that his brother then raised the issue of sexual activity with the complainant.
He said the defendant was ‘in an extreme state of agitation’ and ‘as angry as I have ever seen him’.
Timothy Schofield expressed suicidal thoughts but rejected the presenter’s suggestions that he see his GP.
‘Tim said he didn’t want to take pills. At some point in the conversation Tim told me he was also impotent, and I responded that there were pills for that, too,’ Mr Schofield said.
The statement added: ‘I was washing up and Tim was standing behind me and he said: “You are going to hate me for what I am about to say.”
‘I said there was nothing he could say that would make me hate him. Then he said that he and [the boy] had time together and that last year they had watched porn … and [masturbated].
‘I turned and said: “What did you just say?” He said it was last year and “we were alone together”. Tim said it was just this once. I told him it should never happen again.’
When Holly read this statement during Timothy’s trial in April last year she decided immediately she would never have anything more to do with him.
A friend of Holly’s told : ‘No matter their relationship and how close they were, Holly just could not move on from that.
‘She saw Phillip in a totally different way – and did not want anything to do with him.’
Phillip told a court his brother confided in him about a sex act he carried out with a teenage boy.
The veteran TV host says Timothy made out the incident was a ‘one-off’ during a meeting at his London home.
In written evidence, Phillip said: ‘He then started to tell me about [the boy’s] body.
‘I said, “F***, stop”. I shouted at Tim that he had to stop. I didn’t want to know any of the details but he made it sound like a one-off.
‘I said, “I don’t want you to tell me anymore”. I said, “You’ve got to stop, just never do it again. Regardless how that happened it must never happen again”.
‘Tim would say it was just “[boy] time”.
‘I said, “What the hell is [boy] time?”‘
During the face-to-face conversation, Phillip said he urged his brother to see his GP and get counselling.
As soon as his brother was convicted of sexually abusing the boy, Phillip’s PR team moved to disown him.
In a statement after the jury returned its verdict, Phillip said: ‘My overwhelming concern is and has always been for the wellbeing of the victim and his family. I hope that their privacy will now be respected.
‘If any crime had ever been confessed to me by my brother, I would have acted immediately to protect the victim and their family.
‘These are despicable crimes, and I welcome the guilty verdicts. As far as I am concerned, I no longer have a brother.’
Holly has yet to comment publicly since Phillip’s comeback, but is reported to be ‘non-fussed’ by his barbs.
The TV host had previously vented her frustration at Phillip’s lies when he tried to deny he was having an affair with a showrunner, before eventually coming clean by releasing a bombshell statement to the Daily Mail in May 2023.
He said: ‘I am making this statement via the Daily Mail, to whom I have already apologised personally for misleading, through my lawyer who I also misled, about a story [sic] 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 a just a friendship.
‘That relationship was unwise, but not illegal. It is now over…
‘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 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 judgement in both participating in the relationship and then lying about it.’