Eamonn Holmes ‘embarrassed and ashamed’ over involvement in Phillip Schofield’s coming out

A rare appearance as a guest on This Morning in February 2020 brought Phillip Schofield’s first public disclosure of being gay, while Eamonn was hosting the show with wife Ruth Langsford.

In the second part of an interview with GB News’ Dan Wootton, airing last night (Tuesday 30th May), Holmes said that he and Ruth now feel they were “taken for fools” due to the apparent ulterior motive behind the coming out.

“Oh boy were we used. We went into the studio… and we were taken for fools.

“We notice the Sun newspaper’s here, the story was sold to the Sun newspaper. We began to feel this is not our show at all, it’s been planned for some time, and all is not what it seems.

“He had obviously done a deal to give a version of what the newspaper knew, and it was all a bit weird.”

Holmes was further suspicious by the presence of a number of ITV executives and Schofield’s agents, however he took what was happening at face value.

“At that stage though I believed he was gay and that’s what was coming out and that was the information we were given. We were lied to.”

Holmes, added that he and Ruth feel “embarrassed and ashamed” to now be associated with the display that has become linked to Schofield’s affair cover-up.

“Ruth and I to this day are embarrassed and ashamed when we see those pictures. When we see the toils that some people who are tortured by their sexuality have to go through, and this man was covering up for something else which does not reflect well on him. We feel angry, we feel angry about that, we feel used.”

Holmes further noted that when he got the call to say that Phillip was going to be on the show that day, he had hoped his announcement would be that he was leaving This Morning.

“I thought ‘Oh good, hopefully he’s going.’ He comes into our dressing room and he falls down on his knees crying. I said ‘What’s the matter?’ and he says ‘I’m gay’. I walked over and said ‘Is that all?’

“I thought he’d killed a child or something. I said, ‘Oh so what so you’re gay?'”

“We were very supportive, Ruth hugged him and said ‘We’ll stand by you.’ It wouldn’t enter our minds the man would be discriminated against for being gay.”

Schofield resigned from ITV on Friday (26th May) and was dropped by his talent agency YMU after admitting that he had an “unwise, but not illegal” affair with a young male runner from This Morning.

Due to the fact that the young runner was his junior on the daytime show, his behaviour has been criticised as an ‘abuse of power’.

While the fallen presenter claims that he lied to keep the long-rumoured affair hidden, questions still remain around the extent of ITV’s knowledge of it and its handling of an investigation that took place in early 2020.