Phillip Schofield has revealed that an incident in his This Morning dressing room kickstarted his affair with a colleague in 2017.
The 61-year-old has been dropped by ITV after admitting to lying about having a relationship with a male aged in his 20s who worked as a runner on the show.
The allegations first came to light as their relationship ended in early 2020 but were not widely known to the public until last month when a newspaper decided to run with the story.
Speaking to The Sun in his first interview about the saga, Schofield said that he and the youngster - whom he had previously known away from the show - became good friends when they began working together every day.
"Then one day something happened that just changed it," Schofield recalled. "That is the moment I look back on, and regret so deeply.
"It was in my dressing room in 2017, it was a consensual moment, it was mutual.
"It was not a love affair, it was not a relationship, we were not boyfriends; we were mates. It wasn't feelings... it was more like mates: excitement.
"I was really struggling with my sexuality at that time in the build-up to what happened. But over a period of time it happened maybe five or six times.
"We just didn't think anyone knew, there was no lying. We thought, stupidly, that nobody knew.
"You look at yourself. I was unprofessional, one time, in a 41-year career. I know I did that. And there is no excuse. I won't put forward an excuse. No-one did anything wrong apart from me."
Schofield has also been dropped as an ambassador for King Charles's youth charity The Prince's Trust since the story emerged last month.
Neil Wilkes
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