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.
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