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October 1, 2024 - 10:00am
In the first hour of Phillip Schofield’s Cast Away on Channel 5 — during which the erstwhile presenter is stranded alone on a desert island — the words of the Victorian essayist Thomas Carlyle came to mind. “What on Earth is the use of a wretched mortal’s vomiting up all his interior crudities, dubitations, and spiritual agonising belly-aches, into the view of the public, and howling tragically, ‘See!’ Let him, in the Devil’s name, pass them, by the downward or other methods, in his own water-closet, and say nothing whatever!”
Schofield is the master of both the mirthless laugh (cracking up when nothing remotely amusing has been said) and the performative sob (crying on cue, and then over to Gino in the kitchen). His four-decade TV career involved introducing other people and nodding goodbye to them, like a chatty doorman. As a personality on his own, he is just very, very, very dull. His persona was always squeaky and sexless, like a bright 11-year-old. True to form, the actual survival stuff in episode one — supposedly the bread and butter of this format — was excruciatingly dull too.
He has returned to TV on the assumption that anybody cares. And he has assumed correctly. Because here he is, and here we are.
The isolation of a desert island never really clicks for him or for us, because you’re never alone with an ego that size. “I never wanted to be famous,” he claims at one point, seeming to forget that he’s in the Indian Ocean trying to shake unripe mangos from a high branch for the diversion of the viewing public. He is weirdly reminiscent, in his slow telling of obvious points and pointless stories, of Beverley from Abigail’s Party.
“You look at the things that hurt you the most on your phone,” he says at one point. Well yes, you probably do, if there’s something terribly wrong with you.
There is a hell of a lot of self-examination in Cast Away, but this — as is so often the case — does not lead to an equivalent amount of self-knowledge. I know what his problem is after five minutes; all that surface chummy amiability, the frequent mock-laughter at his own bitter little asides. It’s all avoidance.
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SubscribeBoth Russell Brand and Phillip Schofield in one day. Too much !
Enjoyed the article though.
But no, I still don’t care. And won’t be watching.
If – when space invaders ever make a foray to our Earth – the first things they encounter are tv programmes featuring ‘celebrities’ like Phillip Schofield (or his equally self-obsessed peer Harry)……they’ll turn back.
I don’t like the bloke, but you cared enough to write an article about him though!