Schofield looked 'diminished' says body language expert JUDI JAMES

Massaging his vape like a stress ball, Schofield was diminished, hunched and vulnerable as he faced the public for the first time since his world fell apart: Body language expert JUDI JAMES reveals what Phil DIDN’T say out loud in his interview

• Last night, Phillip Schofield broke his silence for the first time since leaving ITV  

Phillip Schofield looked ‘diminished and hunched’ with a ‘vulnerable gaze’ as he broke his silence after confessing to an affair with a much younger colleague, a body language expert claimed last night.

The former This Morning star sat down yesterday to speak for the first time since leaving the ITV programme, saying he will ‘die sorry’ for the ‘grief’ he inflicted on his young male lover.

Body language expert Judi James told MailOnline that while Schofield was quizzed on his affair, which he previously dubbed ‘unwise, but not illegal’, he sucked on and massaged his blue vape ‘like a stress ball’.

The former host had ‘his shoulders slumped’ with ‘deep groves at the sides of his mouth suggesting misery’ as he categorically denied that he did not groom his former lover.

As Schofield told of his pitiful text to his co-host Holly Willoughby to tell him how ‘deeply, deeply sorry’ he was for lying to her about his secret relationship, Ms James told MailOnline he had a ‘classical facial full of sorrow’. 

Phillip Schofield looked ‘diminished and hunched’ with a ‘vulnerable gaze’ last night breaking his silence to admit he is a ‘broken’ man since confessing to his affair

Body language expert Judi James told MailOnline that while Schofield was quizzed on his affair he sucked on and massaged his blue vape ‘like a stress ball’

‘His eyes widen before his mouth clamps together, pulled empathetically down at the corners,’ she said. 

The star admitted ‘no one did anything wrong apart from me’ in an interview with The Sun where he gave a number of ‘visual cues to signal anxiety’.

In a separate grilling by BBC’s Amol Rajan, he was quizzed over a photograph which showed him attending the young man’s drama school when he was still a pupil and only 15-years-old.

Schofield helped the young man get a job on ITV, which he started when he was 18. 

He said: ‘It was a totally innocent picture, a totally innocent Twitter follow, of which I follow 11,400 people, and then it was a completely innocent backwards and forwards over a period of time about a job, about careers.

‘What’s wrong with that? What’s wrong with talking to someone no matter what age they are?

‘Does that mean that if you’re following anyone on Twitter that you absolutely don’t talk to anybody else or you don’t give advice?’

Studying Schofield’s movements while he was sternly questioned over whether he groomed the young man, Ms James said: ‘As the list of accusations are read out his head tilts about, alert at the words, which would normally signal surprise or disagreement with what is being said. His blink rate increases to suggest tension.’

As Schofield declares he categorically did not groom the young man, he ‘protests his innocence visually by throwing his hands out and upward, shaking his head, clutching his vape in one hand’.

In a separate grilling by BBC’s Amol Rajan, he was quizzed over a photograph which showed him attending the young man’s drama school when he was still a pupil and only 15-years-old

As declares he categorically did not groom the young man, he ‘protests his innocence visually by throwing his hands out and upward, shaking his head, clutching his vape in one hand’

Yet when he admitted that it was ‘unwise the fact that it happened’, Ms James said ‘there is a deep nod of acceptance here and eye contact with the interviewer’.

When he reinforces the point that ‘it was consensual’ he uses ‘eye contact and a precision gesture to make his point firmly’, the body language expert said. 

Schofield cut a sorrowful figure last night in the interviews which saw him apologies to the young man he was involved with, his wife who lied to and his co-star Holly Willoughby, who he didn’t inform of the relationship.

The two bombshell interviews were released just hours after ITV’s boss Dame Carolyn McCall was called to appear in front of MPs to face questions over the broadcaster’s approach to safeguarding and complaint handling.

Schofield’s admission to the secret relationship plunged the broadcaster into a crisis, which saw sponsors pulling out of multi-million-pound deals and former employees making claims of ‘toxicity’ behind the scenes of This Morning.

The Culture, Media and Sport Committee has today written to Dame Carolyn asking her to attend Parliament at 10am on Wednesday, June 14.

The instruction comes after the station was forced into a humiliating climbdown yesterday where it announced it would be bringing in a barrister to ‘carry out an external review to establish the facts’ surrounding the ongoing chaos that has engulfed ITV since the scandal emerged. 

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