Axed This Morning star Philip Schofield is pictured embracing his mother, 87, on a bench

Photos have come to light showing axed This Morning star Phillip Schofield embracing his elderly mother after he was sacked from the show.

The 61-year-old was seen hugging his mother Pat, 87, on a bench overlooking the sea in Newquay, Cornwall, last month. 

Pictures show the TV host revealing he had lost his job after admitting he had an affair with a younger male colleague who worked behind the scenes on the popular ITV programme.

Phillip and his mother had driven from her home to their favourite fish and chip shop on Friday, May 19, before heading out to Pentire Headland where they looked out over the sea, The Sun reports.

The presenter, who had hosted This Morning since 2002, had been in the seaside town to support his mother as his brother, Timothy, was being sentenced for sex offences against a teenage boy.

The same day her youngest son was jailed for 12 years, Pat was told by her eldest child that he had lost his job. 

While getting fish and chips with his mother, Phillip received a phone call from his manager telling him bosses at the channel wanted him to leave the show.

In an interview with the Sun last week, he said: ‘I had to go down to Cornwall to be with her for the sentencing.

‘And our family thing was always to buy fish and chips and go and sit on the headland.

‘I picked my mum up and she went in to get the fish and chips — and while she was getting them, my phone rang.

‘It was my then manager saying, ‘Mate, I am so sorry, it has become too loud for ITV. You will have to step down from This Morning’.

‘And she arrived in the car. She said to me before I arrived, ‘You’re not coming down with any bad news are you?’.

‘She sat in the car and she was all happy to see me, and then she said, ‘Oh, your face has changed’.

I said, ‘Let’s go on to the headland’. And I had to tell her.’

In an interview last week Phillip said he believed his career was ‘over’ and he had ‘lost everything’ after admitting he had lied about his relationship with a man on the show.

‘I have to talk about television in the past tense, which breaks my heart,’ he told the BBC. ‘What am I going to do with my days? I see nothing ahead of me but blackness, sadness regret, remorse and guilt. I did something very wrong, and then I lied about it consistently.’

He said the criticism he’s faced since admitting the affair has had a ‘catastrophic effect’, adding: ‘Do you want me to die? Because that’s where I am. I have lost everything.’

In the interviews, Schofield, who was also dropped by his talent agency YMU after his admission to the Mail about the ‘unwise but not illegal relationship’, said he was ‘utterly broken and ashamed’.

Schofield told the BBC that the young man, who worked as a runner for a short period on This Morning, was 20 when he first had any kind of sexual contact with him.

He told The Sun they had become friends but in 2017 – three years before he came out as gay and separated from wife Stephanie Lowe after 27 years – ‘something happened that just changed it’.

There was ‘a consensual moment’ in Schofield’s dressing room after a show and ‘it was mutual’.

He said he did not have a ‘love affair’ with the man and that ‘it was not a relationship, we were not boyfriends, we were mates’.

He said ‘it wasn’t feelings’ he was getting but it was ‘more like mates: excitement’. He added: ‘I was really struggling with my sexuality at that time in the build up to what happened.’ The pair only had ‘five or six romantic encounters’ over a period of around six months.

He said they met at Schofield’s apartment in south-east London only once after he phoned the young man to invite him over for a beer.

He also denied using ITV money to pay for taxis for the man, saying: ‘I don’t have an ITV account.’

Schofield said he had ‘no excuse’ for what happened, ‘no one did anything wrong apart from me’ and ‘I was unprofessional, one time, in a 41-year career’.

He added that he and the young man ‘stupidly’ thought that ‘nobody knew’ about them.

Earlier this week, ITV said the man was 19 when he did work experience at This Morning in 2015, and 20 years old when he applied and secured a job as a runner on the show.

He later moved to Loose Women in 2019 and left ITV in 2021.

Schofield apologised to Holly Willoughby, who presented This Morning with him for 14 years, for lying about his secret relationship and for tainting her public image.

‘I’ve lost my best friend. I let her down. I let that entire show down. I let the viewers down,’ he told The Sun. ‘Holly did not know [about the affair]. And she was one of the first texts that I sent to say, ‘I am so, so sorry that I lied to you.’

‘She didn’t reply and I understand why she didn’t reply. So if anyone is in any way linking Holly to this, that is absolutely, wholly untrue.’

He told the newspaper the pair have broken all contact, and said it was his paedophile brother’s imprisonment that made her distance herself from the friendship. 

Describing Ms Willoughby, 42, as his ‘TV sister’, Schofield said he understood why she would think, ‘I have to step back from this’.

He told the BBC, when asked who on the This Morning team knew about his affair: ‘To my knowledge, I mean, somebody has to know something for there to be a rumour later on. I didn’t believe that anybody knew.’

The TV presenter has praised his daughters Molly, 29, and Ruby, 27, for ‘guarding him’ as he struggles to cope with the fall-out from the affair. 

He told the BBC: ‘Last week if my daughters hadn’t been there then I wouldn’t be here. And they’ve guarded me and won’t let me out of their sight, it’s like a weird numbness.

‘I know that’s a selfish point of view. But you come to a point where you just think, how much are you supposed to take?’

He also said telling his wife Ms Lowe about his affair ‘was the most difficult conversation I’ve ever had to have with her’.

He added: ‘She is extremely disappointed because I lied to her as well.’