Phillip Schofield’s ‘hands were shaking’ as he broke down over affair with younger colleague: ‘Do you want me to die?’

Phillip Schofield sobbed and’mentioned suicide’ when discussing his encounter with a much younger This Morning colleague.

The long-time ITV breakfast show host quit the show last month and resigned from the network a week later after confessing to having a ‘unwise but not criminal’ connection with one of the show’s runners.

The duo met when the young guy was 15, but the 61-year-old claimed the romance began when he became 18, albeit Schofield admitted lying to his employers and colleagues about the nature of their connection.

Now, the host has given two candid interviews, the most recent of which was with the BBC on Friday morning.

Schofield fought to fight back tears throughout the 45-minute conversation with Amol Rajan, saying that he had been suffering ‘a peculiar numbness’ since the news broke.

‘I know that’s a selfish point of view, but you come to a point where you just think “how much are you supposed to take” if all of those people who write all of that stuff, do they ever think that there’s actually a person at the other end,’ he said.

In a piece published online, Rajan detailed the experience of speaking to Schofield in the wake of the bombshell revelations, and shared that while speaking to him, Schofield’s ‘hands were shaking’.

He went on to write that the work was made substantially more sensitive by his plainly extremely highly heated emotional condition, explaining that the public broadcaster intended the interview to “get to the truth by applying scrutiny.”

‘As Tony Dolce, one of our two camera operators (along with Tony Jolliffe) observed afterwards, Schofield’s hands were shaking through much of the interview,’ he said.

‘Before we began, after we finished, and during the two short breaks in filming, he instinctively reached for a small green vape, from which he took long drags.

‘Schofield, who I had never met, mentioned suicide within moments of our acquaintance, and repeatedly during the interview.’

Schofield also addressed the abuse he has received since confessing the affair, asking, “Do you want me to die?” Because that’s exactly where I am.’

He said he saw ‘nothing ahead’ of him and he had to talk about his career in television ‘in the past tense’.

‘It is relentless, and it is day after day, after day after day.

‘If you don’t think that that is going to have the most catastrophic effect on someone’s mind… do you want me to die? Because that’s where I am.

‘I have lost everything.’

Rajan went on to write that ‘when an interviewee presents themselves in this way, there is a tension between a duty of care to the individual and a duty of care to the truth’.

But he added that ‘hard questions still need to be asked’.

In his interview with The Sun, which was published on Thursday night, Schofield said he had ‘lost everything’ and admitted he didn’t know if he would ever be able to work in TV again.

‘I’ve lost everything. It’s all gone,’ he said.

‘Telly was my safe space, the one thing I loved. Now I don’t know if I will ever work on telly again.’

He explained that he also didn’t know what his ‘identity’ was anymore.

This Morning airs weekdays from 10am on ITV1.