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Can Phillip Schofield’s reputation recover?

The presenter’s sudden departure from This Morning followed a turbulent few years. Can he rebound, asks Ben Dowell

Phillip Schofield’s ascent from Children’s BBC stalwart to ITV platinum status, via Technicolour Dreamcoat, was no surprise
Phillip Schofield’s ascent from Children’s BBC stalwart to ITV platinum status, via Technicolour Dreamcoat, was no surprise
The Times

‘I closed my eyes, drew back the curtain,” Phillip Schofield once sang. “To see for certain what I thought I knew.”

When Schofield took up the role of Joseph for the Technicolor Dreamcoat musical more than 30 years ago, I wasn’t remotely surprised that a good handful of my peers, most of whom were not Andrew Lloyd Webber aficionados, went to see him. This was Phillip Schofield. The Schofe. The man we had grown up with on Children’s BBC along with his puppet mate, Gordon the Gopher, in the Broom Cupboard. This was a man who made us smile, whose impeccable presenting career represented, to anyone with similar ambitions, a dream. And any dream, as the lyricist Tim Rice told us, will do very nicely.