Sarah Ferguson has supported Phillip Schofield following his resignation from This Morning due to a ‘unwise but not criminal’ romance with a runner.
The 61-year-old former Dancing On Ice host left the ITV daily programme after claims that he and Holly Willoughby were ‘barely communicating’ behind the scenes and that their romance had soured.
Days later, he shockingly quit from all of his ITV projects after confessing he was having an affair with his younger colleague while still married to Stephanie Lowe.
Phillip has subsequently given a series of tearful interviews in which he stated that if it weren’t for his two children, Molly and Ruby, he “wouldn’t still be here,” and that he was afraid to leave the house for fear of being spat on.
Throughout the affair, celebrities like as Rupert Everett have called the coverage ‘homophobic’ and ‘outrageous,’ with Sarah, 63, the most recent to support the former The Cube presenter.
On her podcast Tea Talks with businesswoman Sarah Jane Thomson, the duo discussed the role of social media in the Schofield saga, with the royal agreeing it was like a ‘huge game of Chinese whispers’, branding it ‘the court of public opinion.’
As a result, the mother-of-two claimed, it causes “huge bullying to the point of soul eradication.”
‘I don’t believe that anybody has that right to judge and exterminate a person’s own beliefs,’ she continued.
Sarah then urged social media users to reserve their judgment, adding: ‘We all have failings.’
She continued: ‘Could everyone please take a beat or make a cup of tea before you judge another human being without knowing all the facts?
‘We don’t know the facts. We certainly don’t know what people get up to.’
The former wife of Prince Andrew later agreed with Jeremy Clarkson that Phillip was the victim of a “witch hunt” and homophobia.
The Top Gear host wrote in The Sunday Times that the emphasis on Phillip was ‘strange,’ noting that we only ‘casually roll our eyes’ at Leonardo DiCaprio’s girlfriends, who are never past the age of 25.
LGBT+ rights activist Peter Tatchell has stated that the outcry over Schofield’s romance had “more than a stench of bigotry.”
While comparable public partnerships with large age disparities between men and women exist, the former This Morning host’s relationship has been “cast as filthy and abusive,” he claims.
Phillip told The Sun that he and his former lover met when the guy was 15 and he was’maybe’ in his mid-50s, but that the romance began after the man started working at ITV and was ‘consensual.
