Phillip Schofield has blamed his brother for his ITV exit (Channel 5/PA) “In the last 18 months my life has totally unravelled,” says Phillip Schofield at the start of his new TV series, as his boat touches down on a pristine white sand beach. “I locked myself away from the outside world. But now I want to see if the ultimate isolation can finally set me free.
” And so the disgraced TV presenter joins the ranks of those who believe that the path to redemption is through reality television. As the latest contestant on the Channel 5 series Cast Away, Schofield is joining celebrities including Ruby Wax and Joanna Lumley, who sign up to spend 10 days on a remote tropical island off the coast of Africa, with nothing but some basic survival gear and several thousand pounds’ worth of camera kit. In terms of an attempted stab at image rehabilitation, being dropped on a desert island for 10 days and being made to film himself is a masterstroke.
Because what it does is basically allow Schofield to monologue, uninterrupted, for a whole three hours (the series comprises three episodes, of which I was given access to the first one). Some of those hours are entertaining: he is, after all, a talented broadcaster. We see him attempt to go fishing, and fail miserably; chop wood and set up a bivouac that promptly almost gets levelled in a storm.
We see him hunt down a crab and get lost on the island after dark. We even see him crack jokes. “I can get fired, but I never quit,” he q.