Piers Morgan has claimed Phillip Schofield has told him he is “heartbroken” about his exit from This Morning.
On Saturday afternoon, Phillip confirmed that he had agreed with ITV he would stand down from This Morning with immediate effect, having previously denied reports of a fall-out with co-host Holly Willoughby.
Writing in his latest column in The Sun, Piers said he had spoken to his former ITV daytime colleague since the announcement.
He said that while he didn’t “know the full story behind Phillip Schofield’s downfall”, he felt “personal empathy with him is over the manner” of his departure, having also received little on-air fanfare when he left Good Morning Britain in 2021 following comments he’d made about Meghan Markle.
Piers – who reiterated his previous comments that he believes that daytime TV is “infested by a pack of savages” – wrote: “For ITV to not even give him the chance to say a proper goodbye to his large, loyal audience after 21 years struck me as needlessly churlish, and I know he’s utterly heartbroken about it because he told me himself.”
The former GMB anchor also suggested that Phillip is “not the evil monster he’s being painted as” in the media, but claimed that he is also not “the angel his previously halo-clad reputation suggested”, citing the way both Amanda Holden and Eamonn Holmes have spoken out against him.
“But I also know some of his colleagues, current and past, who speak highly of him and feel genuinely sad that his career is going up in smoke like this,” Piers added.
HuffPost UK has contacted a spokesperson for Phillip for comment, and is awaiting a response.
Earlier this week, Alison Hammond and Dermot O’Leary paid a brief on-air tribute to Phillip as This Morning aired for the first time since his exit on Monday.
Holly Willoughby has taken an early half-term holiday and will be back on air on 5 June.
ITV has confirmed that she will host the daytime show with members of the This Morning family while the hunt for a replacement co-presenter gets underway.
This Morning airs weekdays at 10am on ITV1.