Phillip Schofield returns to TV on Channel 5’s ‘Cast Away’ from tomorrow. Photo: PA
If you’re a cancelled celebrity, and you experience a dramatic fall from grace, what do you do next? You could retire from public life, spend time with family and live off the lucrative earnings you’ve likely banked by now.
You could go on the attack, vowing to clear your name. You could beg for forgiveness, pledging to learn and grow from the experience. Or, if you’re Phillip Schofield, you could flee to a deserted island where your very survival is at stake… all captured in glorious high definition for viewers’ entertainment.
Having stepped down from co-presenting ITV’s ‘This Morning’ last year after admitting to an affair with a younger male colleague, Schofield (62) is readying his small-screen return, and he has also promised to set the record straight.
Channel 5’s three-part show, ‘Cast Away’, follows a “celebrity marooned on an uninhabited tropical island off the coast of Madagascar for 10 days”. Before the announcement, the channel posted a short clip of a mystery star walking across a remote beach, as it teased its show on social media.
So is this a smart PR move, or the last desperate gasps of a career that cannot be resuscitated?
Today on The Indo Daily, Dave Hanratty is joined by Saoirse Hanley, columnist and audience editor with the Irish Independent, and by Tessa Ndjonkou, journalist with the Irish Independent, to gauge Phillip Schofield’s comeback chances, and to look at other troubled star names that succeeded and failed in doing likewise.
The Indo Daily: Phillip Schofield’s TV comeback – ‘Should an affair absolutely destroy me?’
