There is little else in the history of British television that has been a continuously debated media event as much as the Phillip Schofield Relationship with Matthew McGreevy story. In May 2023, Schofield came out as having an affair with a male colleague (who McGreevy has been widely reported to be – though neither he, Schofield, nor ITV have officially confirmed any name), and tabloids and online commentators have gone hard into speculation. This article attempts to distinguish fact and fiction.
Who Is Matthew McGreevy?
Matthew McGreevy (born 21 March 1996 in Manchester). Several UK tabloids were widely claiming that the man was McGreevy, although this has never been officially confirmed by Phillip Schofield, the identity of the man on the show, or ITV. Prior to the scandal, McGreevy had carved out a brief career as a child actor, with appearances on the children’s TV series The Sparticle Mystery in 2011.
He subsequently appeared in a host of other shows and productions, ranging from The Mill to Millie Inbetween, In the Flesh and Banana, before shifting behind-the-scenes to work in TV production. As he was never a household name like Schofield, it is thought that he had a relatively unassuming career heading up to his association with one of the decade’s biggest media stories.
How Their Paths Reportedly Crossed
The details of how Schofield and the teenage man at the centre of the scandal initially met may differ slightly from publication to publication, but they do all have similar outlines. As for how they first knew each other, one says they met through a theatre company Schofield was a patron of, while some others speak about a school visit. Several articles all mention that Schofield knew the young man when he was a teenager and their professional relationship deepened in the following years, finally leading to the young man getting a job at ITV.
Schofield’s own lawyers confronted this head-on at the time of the scandal, and acknowledged he had encountered the colleague aged 15 but insisted the relationship did not develop until after the latter joined ITV, having turned 18. It was this distinction that was hugely significant to Schofield’s public defence, since it was a cornerstone in his claim that the relationship, while inappropriate, was not unlawful.
There are also claims that the young man’s work relationship with Schofield grew over time. Several reports have him stepping up into a producer-type role relating to Schofield’s shows, though the claimed job titles vary depending on the source and must be regarded as somewhat uncertain given much of this report is based on anonymous sources.
The May 2023 Admission
The story broke over time rather than all at once. Schofield resigned from This Morning on 20 May 2023, first announcing he was leaving over a feud with his longtime TV co-host Holly Willoughby rather than an affair. In his resignation statement at that time, he said he had agreed to step down “with immediate effect” after “the very difficult last few days” without saying why he was leaving.
The full story only came to light days later. On 26 May, Schofield revealed he’d lied about an affair with a colleague when speaking to This Morning, declaring: ‘I did have a consensual on-off relationship with a younger male colleague at This Morning’ and ‘In an effort to protect my ex-colleague I haven’t been truthful about the relationship.’ He also revealed he had resigned from ITV.
Schofield was dropped by his agency, YMU, on the same day, with the group’s chief executive confirming the agency’s ‘founding principles’ were honesty and integrity and that talent management ‘is a relationship based entirely on trust’. Throughout, Schofield was cautious with his phrasing. Time and again he described the affair as “unwise” and consensual, but repeatedly stressed it was “not illegal.” That phrase is one of the great lines of the entire saga, parroted in the follow-ups endlessly.
Fallout and Public Reaction On Phillip Schofield Relationship with Matthew McGreevy
It went far beyond Schofield’s own career. And his TV collaboration with Holly Willoughby that spanned more than a decade and helped establish This Morning, was also ended. Willoughby told the show’s viewers earlier that she was “deeply saddened” to hear that Schofield had been lying about the affair, with an ITV spokeswoman saying the broadcaster had been “badly let down”.
The controversy also led to institutional questions. ITV appointed an external barrister to investigate what the company knew about the relationship and whether the company’s safeguarding standards had been sufficient, and Carolyn McCall, chief executive of ITV, was called before a UK parliamentary committee to face questioning about the affair. A former culture secretary also questioned publicly the safeguarding process and how the employee involved was permitted to work on the program.
In the months that followed, Schofield gave several interviews, some of which he used to counter the most serious allegations against him. He denied the claim that he used his position to seduce his former deputy and described their relationship as his greatest sin, and revealed he had felt suicidal in the light of the affair becoming public. During another exchange, he maintained he was totally crushed and filled with shame regarding the relationship while reiterating he had not acted improperly.
What Happened to the Relationship Itself
Independent reporting indicates that the relationship that had existed between Schofield and the other man was over and went sour even before the official revelation of the relationship in 2023. The Guardian, for example, reported in 2020 that the relationship between them collapsed during that year, and that the younger man had gone to work on a different ITV programme before finally leaving his role in TV for good and fading from social media.
It is important to highlight that much of this later chapter- including assertions about legal letters or the precise details of the failure- is based on unverified sourcing as opposed to official statements from the subjects. Schofield has never revealed his identity in public, and the alleged person named as Matthew McGreevy has never spoken publicly to set the record straight.
Where Things Stand Now
Schofield’s TV career since the scandal has re-emerged on a reduced and more cautious scale. In 2024, he appeared on screens again with an island-hopping survival show based around the coast of Madagascar that incorporated Schofield’s own fall from grace into its storyline. It was his first high-profile TV appearance since the incident of May 2023. The man who people have widely but unofficially labelled as Matthew McGreevy has largely kept his own counsel since the story was broken and hasn’t granted any interviews.
Final Thoughts
So there is a fact at the heart of the Phillip Schofield relationship with Matthew McGreevy — it is that we have established his account and the subsequent consequences that it has led to, but that we do not know who it is that fits the description. Schofield’s account of a consensual sexual relationship with a younger colleague of his was confirmed, and his subsequent lies about it were exposed to the media, his family, and his colleagues.
But never has it been confirmed who was said by the media at the time to be the unnamed person. So, of course, Schofield’s account is established, and the consequences are not in doubt, but there remains an unconfirmed unnamed colleague at the centre of the story.
