Jeremy Clarkson has hit out at the treatment faced by Phillip Schofield as the This Morning star continues to face scrutiny after revealing his affair with a younger colleague on the ITV show.
Last month, Schofield announced that he was leaving the programme following rumours of an alleged ‘fallout’ between him and his co-host Holly Willoughby, 42.
Amid mounting speculation, the 61-year-old later released a follow-up statement confirming that he was romantically involved with a much younger runner who worked on This Morning, saying that the relationship was ‘unwise’ but ‘not illegal’.
The TV personality, who has since stopped working with ITV completely, spoke in further detail about what transpired between him and his ex-lover in an emotional interview with the BBC, during which he shared that he understood how the late Caroline Flack felt before she took her own life.
Schofield claimed that criticism of his relationship with the runner in light of their age gap stemmed from homophobia, with actor Rupert Everett also recently saying in his defence: ‘It’s outrageous, this kind of Puritan fascism that’s going on. If it’s just about him having an affair and lying to his agency – why can’t you lie to your agent?’
Clarkson, 63, has now said that in his view, he finds the criticism of Schofield over his secret affair ‘weird’.
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Stressing that he doesn’t know Schofield on a personal level, Clarkson wrote for The Sunday Times: ‘He maintains that his lover was over the age of consent when their relationship became physical, but that hasn’t silenced the howls of disgust.
‘And I find that weird. We casually roll our eyes when we hear that Leonardo DiCaprio’s new girlfriend is three and we even nod appreciatively when we learn that the age gap between Al Pacino and his pregnant girlfriend is 54 years.’
The Grand Tour star said that he’s never seen a ‘witch-hunt’ like the one he believes that Schofield is facing.
‘I’ve never seen a witch-hunt like it, and what baffles me most of all is that, as things stand, no crime has been committed,’ he stated.
‘I don’t know him at all well and have no skin in the game, but it seems to me he is only guilty of being what he said he was: gay.’
LGBT+ rights campaigner Peter Tatchell recently said that the outrage against Schofield’s affair has ‘more than a whiff of homophobia’ to it.
While other relationships with big age gaps between men and women take place in the public eye, the former This Morning host’s relationship has been ‘cast as sordid and abuse’, he said.
While Schofield and his former lover – who he said he’s still friends with – met when the man was 15 and the presenter was in his fifties, he said that the relationship began when the man was older and was ‘consensual’.
This Morning airs weekdays from 10am on ITV.
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