As many late-80s babies like me who grew up watching 90s children’s television will surely relate, Phillip Schofield is a face ingrained upon our early childhood memory.
Paired with the ever-present Gordon the Gopher on BBC’s Going Live! between 1987 and 1993, the fresh-faced double act became a fixture every Saturday morning throughout the happy living rooms of millions of wide-eyed youngsters.
Unlike his now-white-haired contemporary, however, dear Gordon no longer graces our once-beloved tele sets.
For more than 40-years, in fact, Mr Schofield has drained the attention of much of the country, having secured himself as one of daytime tv’s leading presenters since the latter part of 2002; his most predominant role on ITV’s This Morning, a tabloid and celeb-obsessed mid-morning escapade, often receives up to one million viewers per day.
No mean feat.
But what does such seeming popularity tell us about the country at large? Indeed, what can people like Phillip Schofield tell us about it, if anything, or should the past and present actions of one of Britain’s most steadfast talking-heads simply be judged in isolation?
During a monumental outpouring of unity and respect by the British people toward the recently deceased Queen Elizabeth II, it is perhaps not advised in such moments to make everything about you.
Having been ‘laid in state’ at Westminster Hall since mid-last week, thousands upon thousands of visitors have — in typical British fashion — queued for hours, snaking across London, to bow their heads in reverence of the Queen’s rested coffin.
Whether one feels trepidation toward the new Monarch, King Charles III, and his overly-political (and often sinister) speeches surrounding ‘green energy’ and the future of banking, one can likely still appreciate the stamina of those involved who spent rain or shine saying ‘goodbye’ to what will likely be the monarchy of somewhat-silent past.
Such stamina wasn’t worthy enough for Mr Schofield, however, who, alongside his moon-faced-and-masked co-malevolent, Holly Willoughby, decided they were too good to stand around waiting in line with such a pleb-like audience, such is their proclivity and talent to produce ‘top-tier’ entertainment and news for them, instead.
Who, for example, could ever imagine, let alone fathom, one of the country’s most-watched daytime tv shows recently reworking their popular ‘Spin To Win’ call-in ‘competition’ feature to include ‘ENERGY BILLS’ as a ‘cash’ prize, ultimately giving any winning ‘cost of living crisis’ contestant the chance to have their gas and electric paid for over the course of four months?
As many sharp-eyed critics were correct to point out online, so far had the viral clip travelled, this was a lot less ‘daytime’ and a lot more ‘dystopian’.
#ThisMorning has turned completely dystopian and Black Mirror by offering to pay energy bills as a competition prize. pic.twitter.com/hs1DD6NXbo
— Scott Bryan (@scottygb) September 5, 2022
Most shockingly, perhaps, over the course of the Covid-pandemic, Schofield and Willoughby played a direct part in emboldening the then-given government message, nay, psychological terror, that if one were to ‘stay safe’ at the time, one must take every precaution.
Upon returning to their sofas after a seven-week break following lockdown to present This Morning back in September 2020, the pathetic pair reunited to ‘boost’ the nation’s spirits, finding no better way to do so than hugging each other through a stage-lit ‘plastic sheet’.
Defying, in one fell swoop, almost every realm of ‘normality’ in existence, it shouldn’t be left in any doubt whatsoever that the producers of their show, as well as the duo, themselves, knew exactly what buttons to press when it came to perpetuating the culture of fear society had been swept up in that summer.
So brazen and so horrifying was the government’s fear-porn propaganda at the time, the very same week, in fact, that the country’s then-Health Secretary, Matt Hancock, shamefully warned young members of the population not to ‘kill their gran’ by spreading the virus unknowingly.
In essence, the idea that anyone, including children, should be allowed to continue physical contact with their dearest loved ones, was being manipulated to become an abnormal and dangerous act, solidified in the country’s psyche by pre-planned stunts such as those seen on Schofield’s This Morning programme.
Our elderly communities, specifically, it should be said, were therefore being trained to be — and were — abandoned, not only by government protocol itself, since highlighted by a devastating Amnesty UK report, but also encouraged to be neglected, or avoided, through visual props and stage-management of a seemingly ‘new normal’ trade of PPE-prone ‘human compassion’, broadcast to the dulling morning masses.
It’s this particular brand of low-grade celebrity dramatics dressed up as sincerity that has helped cement Schofield’s television career in full, symbolised perfectly well back in February 2020 when he ‘came out as gay’ despite being ‘happily married’ to his wife of 27 years.
The monumental and historic event was met with great fanfare, with many in the tabloid press deeming the announcement as ‘brave’, despite the clearly obvious questions surrounding his faithfulness to his long-suffering wife who was now subject to having herself humiliated in real-time across all network news channels.
His status as a newly-crowned ‘rainbow community’ hero far more critical to him than modesty.
Brushing their act off for the cameras, once more, the This Morning set would soon turn psychotherapy studio, as Schofield’s ever-disingenuous co-conspirator, Holly Willoughby, sat down with him to milk the news for all it was worth.
In the aftermath of such penetrative prose, ongoing rumours of on-set bullying and an underage gay love affair with a fellow staff member were soon quashed, forgotten about and never revisited.
Talk about ‘gay privilege’.
Doubtless, it is this general veil of entitlement, ego, dishonesty, and absurdity which tends to follow Phillip Schofield everywhere he turns, that he appears to personify everything putrid about a modern-day, injustice-ridden Great Britain as a whole.
Truthfully, what better words are there to describe the entirety of the past two-and-a-half-years of a ‘Boris’ de Pfeffel Johnson-led pandemic?
Whilst in the wake of Johnson, Schofield’s foolish ‘crimes’ seem minute, as unwritten rules go, queue-jumping in an island of innate queuers should be irredeemable—even more so in the presence of our dead Head of State.
What he and his show represents, though, is a debasement of society writ-large, and one in which scandalous behaviour is consistently rewarded and promoted in lieu of any actual substance or sanctity.
Bring back the squeaky clean Gordon the Gopher.
