Not so long ago, dishevelled, chaotic pictures like these would have been career suicide for Phillip Schofield.
But today they represent something else entirely: his freedom.
A little bleary eyed, the television presenter assisted a younger male friend out of a London bar after what’s understood to have been an afternoon of partying last Saturday.
While scandal-hit Phil has been seen drinking in pubs several times since he stood down from ITV back in May 2023, this is the first time he has been seen at a dedicated LGBTQ+ venue, the Arzner Bar & Café in Bermondsey, South East London. His companion was a London-based nurse named Joshua Luke Sharman, 30.
The pub may be just on the other side of London, some eight miles from the £3million home in leafy Chiswick he bought after he came out and separated from wife Stephanie Lowe, but it’s a world away.
I’m told Phil is tired of the upmarket neighbourhood – and more specifically the busybodies who live close to him.
Indeed, the thought of him behaving as openly as he did last weekend on chi-chi Chiswick High Road is almost unthinkable. By just 7pm, both men – matching vapes in hand, and similarly dressed in casual shorts, with Joshua’s Calvin Klein underwear poking over his waistband – appeared to be stumbling.
Phil and handsome Joshua, whose Instagram account shows images of him with celebrity friends including former Coronation Street star Sally Lindsay and tv presenter Gok Wan, also shared a cuddle and nuzzled into one another as they left the venue.
Phil’s admission came with his resignation from the ITV’s This Morning where he worked for more than 30 years – and ended his friendship with long-time co-presenter Holly Willoughby
Schofield, 63, seen leaving a bar in London, giving his male companion, 30-year-old Joshua Luke Sharman, a shoulder to lean on
This is the first time Schofield has been spotted at a dedicated LGBTQ+ venue, the Arzner Bar & Café in Bermondsey, south-east London
It’s not known whether Phil is in a relationship with Joshua. But the 63-year-old is, I’m told, ‘enjoying his best gay life’.
All this is quite a milestone for Phil, the father-of-two who spent so long in the closet.
‘Phil doesn’t care any more. He is who he is and now he is able to be that person,’ said one associate of the former This Morning presenter.
‘He is spending more and more time in the London Bridge, Waterloo, Bermondsey area of London. It’s much more him than Chiswick these days. That’s all a bit stuck-up: a bit of a Nappy Valley area, and very family-orientated.
‘That isn’t who Phil is anymore. They are not his people. He is very much in his ‘having fun’ era.
‘He was having a ball at the Arzner, but he also goes to other venues in the area. He’s built up a group of friends in the community and is loving life. It’s time to move on and make the most of things.’
‘Gone are the days of cycling along the river in Chiswick. It’s time for something new.’
And that appears to include Joshua. I’m told that Phil has a large group of gay male friends, but is particularly close to the nurse, who describes himself as an ‘academic, inexperienced aviator and clueless but optimistic PhD candidate’.
This summer, I’m told, has been a turning point for Phil, who hid his sexuality for decades, before eventually coming out in February 2020 live on This Morning.
Then, a little over three years later, following many behind the scenes whispers, Phil finally came clean about his romance with a much younger male colleague whom he had helped get a job on This Morning.
The young man, who we have never named, was later moved to another ITV show, Loose Women, after the two men went their separate ways.
But Phil’s admission, which he made to me personally along with an apology for lying about the affair, came with his resignation from the network where he had worked for more than 30 years – and ended his friendship with long-time co-presenter Holly Willoughby.
In his stunning mea culpa, sent to me in an email, Phil said: ‘I am making this statement via the Daily Mail, to whom I have already apologised personally for misleading, through my lawyer who I also misled, about a story [sic] which they wanted to write about me a few days ago.
‘The first thing I want to say is: I am deeply sorry for having lied to them, and to many others about a relationship that I had with someone working on This Morning. I did have a consensual on-off relationship with a younger male colleague at This Morning.
‘That relationship was unwise, but not illegal. It is now over…
‘I will reflect on my very bad judgment in both participating in the relationship and then lying about it.’
Today, though, Phil has come full circle. The apologetic stance has gone, with one friend saying: ‘He’s owning who he is now. He lost so much by hiding it for so long, and lying about it.
‘When it comes to having fun, he’s making up for lost time.’
Joshua Luke Sharman pictured with Gok Wan
And so, Summer 2025 has been very different to those in his previous life. Up until 2023, Phil would holiday at his villa on the Algarve, right next door to Holly’s own summer residence. The pair were inseparable: their families would swim, snorkel and sunbathe together, ending blissful sunny days with dinner parties. Holly would also enjoy girls’ nights out with Phil’s grown-up daughters, Molly and Ruby.
But today, Holly, her husband Dan Baldwin and their three children Harry, 16, Belle, 14, and 10-year-old Chester are in the Algarve, minus the Schofields.
Some say that Holly misses her old friend Phil – but you’d never know from looking at her. On Thursday, she was smiling and relaxed on a shopping trip not far from her lavish property.
Despite the unhappiness and tension between them, I’m told Phil still owns his villa. He always insisted to me that he would never sell, and instead appears to just avoid the times when his former best friend is there so there won’t be any awkward encounters.
‘Phil doesn’t see why he should have to sell his villa just because Holly has one next door,’ says a source close to him. ‘It’s quite easy to work out when she’ll be there as her holidays have to work around the school holidays. Phil’s don’t anymore.
‘He and his family have many happy memories from Portugal and he loves it. Just because Holly still goes there, doesn’t mean he can’t and he’s very serious about that.
‘Of course, Holly probably won’t want to see him either. And who can blame her?’
Back in London, Phil has also been seen entering a house situated close to the gay bar that he partied in last weekend. It’s unknown whether he’s purchased the house – but his seeming use of it as a proxy base is yet another sign that his life is changing.
Before he resigned from This Morning, his weeks were spent at the penthouse apartment he owned with his wife Stephanie. With views of the Shard, and near London Bridge, it was closer to the This Morning studios than their other sprawling property near Henley-on-Thames, Oxfordshire. This smart apartment in a gated development was also where he was rumoured to have spent time with the much younger This Morning colleague he had an affair with while married to his loyal wife. There were even claims that he would hold ‘Playtime Thursdays’ with his younger lover in the apartment, to celebrate the end of his working week.
The flat was sold for around £1.2million – £25,000 less than Phil and Stephanie paid in 2012 when it had just been built, something the couple were said to be unfussed by, desiring a clean slate more than a profit at that fraught time.
Now that the dust has settled, though, Phil has boomeranged right back into his old stomping ground.
‘Phil always loved that part of London and now he is back there,’ said one source. ‘He likes it there, because it isn’t as judgy.’
Aside from the location, though, Phil’s liberated behaviour can also partly be attributed to him no longer having a career to protect. Industry insiders suggest his decisions about how he lives his life have been helped by him accepting his career is all but over after decades of being widely regarded as one of Britain’s most accomplished broadcasters.
Last October he tried to reboot his TV career in the Channel 5 series Cast Away, which saw him travel to a deserted Madagascan island where he spent 10 days alone searching for food, water and shelter – all in front of the cameras.
During impassioned, bitter monologues screened on the show, he took aim at his former ITV colleagues, declaring that there were three ‘cowards’ he worked with at the channel – ‘one who never stepped up in queuegate’ (when he and Holly notoriously skipped the queue to visit Queen Elizabeth II’s lying-in-state), ‘one who never stepped up when I was being battered by… one journalist’ and ‘one [who] is just brand-orientated’.
Holly and Phillip are pictured together in Portugal, prior to their bitter fall-out
Phil’s television return prompted much speculation that it was the first step in a broader comeback to our screens, but he himself appeared to rule that out in the last of the three episodes, telling viewers that he didn’t ‘care any more, this is me having my say as I bow out’.
Despite the bravado of those words, one source familiar with the star has some doubts that Phil really meant them.
‘Perhaps Phil was hanging on for some hope that he will make a big return after Cast Away,’ said the source. ‘But it is very unlikely to happen now – so why care what people think?’
But while life is very different for ITV’s former golden boy, there is one very surprising constant: Stephanie, his wife of 32 years.
Many assumed that divorce would surely be on the cards for the couple, after Phil’s public disgrace. Stephanie, 60, was humiliated and furious when she learned of her husband’s affair back in 2023.
Yet close friends of the couple then insisted to me that they would never divorce.
Today, more than two years on I am assured that Phil and Stephanie – who met when he was 25 and a fresh faced children’s television presenter and she was a production assistant for CBBC – have no intention of legally ending their marriage.
Few wives would’ve shown the dignity she did when Phil came out. At the time, she said: ‘I will still be there, holding his hand. Everyone should be proud to live their own truth.
‘Our family have also been so supportive and will help us going forward. Although this is difficult for us all, I support Phillip in taking this brave step.’
And today, despite his betrayals, she remains where she said she would be: at his side.
‘Phil and Steph are a unit, they love each other,’ said one friend. ‘They are so unbelievably close. She knows him better than anybody ever could. She is a rock for Phil and has forgiven him so much.
‘Phil, Steph, Molly and Ruby are super close and do so much together regardless of what has happened in recent years. It would take someone very, very, very special to come into Phil’s life for him to want a divorce. Nobody will ever match Steph.’
