After 27 years of marriage and a career that has spanned more than three decades, brave Phillip Schofield today came out as gay.
Revealing he has the backing of his loyal wife Stephanie Lowe and their two daughters Molly and Ruby, the This Morning host told his Instagram followers he has been "coming to terms with the fact that I am gay."
His announcement was met with an outpouring of support from the nation and co-host Holly Willoughby, who hugged him protectively during a one-off This Morning interview.
Admitting he's been grappling with his sexuality for a while, Phillip, 57, said he's way off looking for a new partner, explaining how he's taking things one day at a time.
"This was the big day and this is the day I knew everything was pointing towards," he told Holly.
"And I couldn't have done it if it hadn't been for you [Holly]. But no, there's no one I'm running off to."
Phil and Steph met back in the eighties when he was working in childrens' TV and she was a production assistant.
He invited her to house sit for him while he travelled overseas for work before love blossomed and they went on to enjoy one of the most stable marriages in showbusiness.
But before meeting Stephanie, Phillip once admitted he was something of a party boy, revealing how he dabbled with drugs and downed vodka with prostitutes on a wild trip to Berlin.
While working on Saturday morning kids' TV show Going Live!, the star confessed he'd had a 'dark side'.
He recalled a last-minute boys’ trip to go and watch the Berlin Wall being brought down after a boozy lunch in London, which ended with dinner with two German prostitutes.
“We ended up drinking vodka, eating caviar with a couple of East German hookers," he said in an interview with Holly Willoughby for Hunger magazine back in 2013.
“We got in the car and we drove through Checkpoint Charlie with these two East German hookers, no questions asked. God knows what the children’s television would have thought!"
Phillip was widely considered to be the innocent golden boy of kids' TV and admitted he struggled with the pressure to be good. But he quickly learned how to fly under the radar.
“It wasn’t a case of hiding it. I did the same as everybody else. I was a lad, we partied a bit, but I didn’t hide anything. It’s just that nobody bothered to look in the right place," he continued.
“You have to remember that doing kids' TV then, you were expected to be the son of Enid Blyton, and that was very difficult.
“Now you can be much more open, and have a proper life. But then, it was almost, ‘Oh, you’ve got a girlfriend. What type of girl is she?’
“But my mates and I very quickly realised: don’t go into central London and have a wild time.”
He dabbled with drugs, but for the silver fox, it was a night on the lash that held more appeal.
“By the way, when I say partying, my weakness has always been booze. I never got much into drugs, because I wasn’t very good at it," he continued.
“We were simply getting leathered in Chiswick where we lived at the time. Everybody knew us and nobody was bothered, and nobody would tell. So I got away with it.”
