When Dermot met Philip Schofield……..

My fifteen minutes of fame happened back in 2006, when believe it or not i was a guest on This Morning- with Philip Schofield and Fern Britton being the co-presenters. At the time I was doing the rounds as I had been pulled into doing toast portraits of celebrities as part of a campaign being run by Marmite to celebrate a new ‘Squeezy’ variety. They (Marmite, or rather, Unilever) had decided to move away from the classic glass jar, as apparently punters were complaining about not being able to get at the last scraps of marmite on the bottom with their knives.

The initial campaign was shot in a studio in Shoreditch and featured drawings of characters and concepts that tended to polarise people. Subjects included George Bush, Jose Maurinho, Mr. Bean, body hair, socks with sandals……(you get the picture; insert Boo or Yay as necessary). There was a (marmite) snowball effect of some sort: the next step was being asked to produce some portraits or celebrities in Marmite on toast that people either loved or hated. Producers at ITV got wind of it (or rather got wind through the PR company that Marmite were using), and asked me to appear as a side feature on the show with toast portraits of the guests that were featuring on the show that particular morning – Cannon and Ball, and the actor Jason Isaacs.

t was all a very pleasant experience as I recall; I got picked up outside my Camberwell house share by a limo and was whisked into the South Bank where I was plonked on a makeup chair and made to look beautiful (always good to gild the lily). I was then ushered in and did my piece which lasted all of five minutes before being whisked out again, bundled into a limo and deposited back home.

From what I remember Fern Britton was very  pleasant, warm and friendly, and asked some very respectful questions about something that really was completely daft and ridiculous when I look back on it. Philip Schofield stayed pretty much in the background, apart from reaching out at the end of the segment to take a bite of his own toast portrait. The cameras cut just as he was chewing, whereupon he said ‘You could have at least warned me how stale and dry this was’ – before dropping it and stalking off in disgust.

I do laugh at all of this now. I guess I have been thinking back to it (I am cursed with an almost encyclopaedic memory) particularly since all the controversy surrounding Schofield and the career implosion he has just experienced. This all popped into my mind during Schofield’s dramatic coming out speech on This Morning back in February 2020, which was then lost in the chaos of the burgeoning COVID-19 pandemic as the world at large had begun to realise what was coming down the line, and how it would would affect everybody in unimaginable ways forever.

There have been numerous comments and interviews about how long Schofield had been hiding the truth of his personal life for the benefit of this career; I remember hearing some rumours from people who knew others working at the BBC. This is all very much hearsay; of this I am conscious, but in the UK there has been so much contentious discussion on TV, in the newspapers and in the swirling morass of social media and Internet debate, that it has become more and more difficult to ignore.

One thing that has stuck with me, is a comment I heard a comedian make, stating that Schofield did something that a straight man wouldn’t have been able to by hiding his behaviour via the goodwill of the Pride movement, who embraced him with open arms and celebrated his coming out and his honesty in doing so. One also can’t help but think of other media figures such as Ian McKellen and Peter Tatchell, who in earlier days had the courage, honesty and determination to be forthright about who they were and speak up for the rights of LGBTQ people, particularly back in those days when society was nowhere nearly as accepting and celebratory of us and our rights were being curtailed on all sides.

These are just two examples, and as I said in my last newsletter – ‘Everywhere is full of heroism’. I also am somewhat reluctant to kick someone when they are down and when they are facing complete ruination of their life and career. But looking at the examples of McKellen and Tatchell (Google them if you’re not up to speed as to what they have done) it is very difficult to have much sympathy for Philip Schofield’s 25+ years of avoidance and concealment and how it must have hurt his family, particularly when set against the emerging allegations of the vindictive and toxic work culture at This Morning that he presided over.

Rant over! Enjoy the sunny weekend…….I’m off to binge-watch ‘The Morning Show’…..again…..

(Below: some of the original celebrity toast portraits: from top left: David Cameron, Pete Doherty, Margaret Thatcher, Charlotte Church, Victoria Beckham, Simon Cowell, Gordon Ramsay, Nikki Grahame from Big Brother, James Blunt, Jude Law.)