Phillip Schofield rules out TV comeback amidst new series

Phillip Schofield has denied rumours of a TV comeback, despite appearing on screen for the first time in 16 months in his new Channel 5 series, Phillip Schofield: Cast Away.

Schofield emphasised that he has no plans to return to a sofa-style show like This Morning, saying: "You expect your life to follow a path? I honestly thought, you know. I'm going to die on live television, hopefully at 93. But then you know it. It's gone. And it's not the way you planned it to be. It's not the life you expected."

He added, "Look, I love telly. I've got telly in my bones, but I won't sit on a sofa again. I'm not going to do that again. There are people I won't work with again. Some people I won't work with again. I've been hurt so badly by that sort of telly, that you get to a point where you think 'I don't want to do it anymore'."

Schofield quit ITV in May last year after admitting to an affair with a young male colleague on This Morning, which he described as "unwise but not illegal."

In the series, Schofield expresses anger and hurt over how he was treated by ITV and how it tainted his love for TV.

The host shared, "When what happened to me happened, it screwed up my favourite building in the world, and it pretty well blew away all those happy memories, and suddenly the place became hostile to me, and that was heartbreaking."

Schofield also criticised those who wronged him, possibly referencing former colleague Holly Willoughby, noting, "It is hard to come to terms with the fact that the people you thought you knew were not the people that you knew. They had completely different agendas."

He emphasised that he no longer needs "200 fake friends" and now cherishes his 10-15 close friends. 

Schofield concluded, "The good thing is, when you do a programme like this and you do it just for yourself, you have nothing to lose. They've taken pretty much everything. Reputation, dignity, legacy, everything away."