Reality behind two morning TV bombshells

There were two morning TV bombshells on opposite sides of the world. But one word reveals the key difference between them.

If politics is Hollywood for ugly people, then morning television is politics for the mildly attractive.

No other timeslot and no other medium intrigues, inveigles, outrages and obsesses people like morning TV and it attracts the biggest personalities in the industry — both the best and the baddest.

It also courts the most controversy, often without courting it at all. Even the most banal throwaway line or statement of the obvious can instantly turn into a firestorm. Trust me I know.

And yet what really matters — the only thing that really counts — is what happens offscreen. What happens in what used to be known as the real world.

This week that fact was proven beyond all doubt by two TV bombshells on opposite sides of the globe and it is a salutary lesson for us all, so let us begin.

Two top-rating veteran morning television hosts vacated their roles in almost perfectly opposite ways. One announced his departure with much dignity and after much consideration at a time of his own choosing and another was summarily executed in an inferno of toxic publicity.

David Koch gets emotional when announcing he’s leaving.

Happily, the first is Australia’s David Koch and even more happily — at least for us tabloid types — the second is the UK’s Phillip Schofield.

Just weeks ago both men were towering and beloved national figures and yet today Kochie — as he is universally known — still is, while Schofield — who as far as I am aware has no affectionate nickname — is a pariah.

So how is Koch so effortlessly ascending to the gates of St Peter while Schofield seems destined for the other place?

The answer will not be found on your TV screens. Both men presented as warm, kind and decent chaps — often with a cheeky sense of humour. The difference is that Koch really was all of those things while Schofield was, to put it mildly, not.

Prior to all this Schofield was probably most famous internationally for coming out on live TV. But far from this being any kind of career-killer there was only — rightly and laudably — a groundswell of public support. If anything his popularity surged.

This, like countless other examples including here in Australia, happily puts the lie to the fashionable left notion that Western nations are consumed by homophobia and other bigotry.

But sadly Phillip was not the best ambassador for his cause. In recent months it emerged there had been a breakdown in his relationship with his co-host — not uncommon but unthinkable in the case of my beloved Sarah Harris — and that one of them would have to go.

Phillip Schofield and Holly Willoughby on ITV This Morning

The fact that that someone was the more senior and male member of the duo also speaks volumes, especially given another fashionable left notion that old men are vastly overprotected and valued by society in general and television in particular.

It was only after his departure from This Morning that it emerged that Schofield had had a clandestine long-running affair with a much younger male staff member, thus completing his services to tabloid journalism.

But while this must have been awful for his wife and family, it was not his true undoing — at least in the eyes of this tabloid journalist.

At the risk of mixing a very messy metaphor, the problem was never who Schofield was having sex with. The problem, both ironically and metaphorically, is that he was a wanker.

In the wake of Kochie’s departure there has been an outpouring of revelations of small private acts of decency and kindness.

Kochie 👏🏼 pic.twitter.com/PYskFQZHCt

— MrSamMac (@MrSamMac) May 28, 2023

One that struck me was from Sunrise’s weather wunderkind Sam Mac, another lovely bloke, who revealed that almost a decade ago Koch had sought out his number just so he could send him a glowing text message after his first nervous cross.

Or Kochie politely excusing himself from a chat with this masthead on the day he announced his resignation so he could take a call from the Prime Minister, only to call back and resume the interview.

Or just being a down-to-earth bloke who got on as well with the crew as the cast and tradies as much as traders. As I joked off-air during my last Sunrise appearance, nobody can find anyone to say a bad word about the bloke.

By contrast Schofield has had a queue of critics with brickbats longer than the line he skipped for the Queen’s funeral. It is hard to find a soul to say anything good about him.

That is the ultimate reason for his downfall. Not the great powers that be but the ordinary crowd who fled the moshpit amid his first stage dive.

Thus the mighty fall and it is only how they have treated people during their rise that determines whether they are saved by a safety net or allowed to plummet to the pits of Hell.

Nor just how they have treated celebrities and guests or executives and journalists but also camos and cleaners and soundos and security guards.

Indeed, it has been alleged that Schofield didn’t even know the names of the people who worked for him or acknowledge co-workers in the corridor — and you don’t get a more damning character indictment than that.

Had he been more respectful or nice towards the so-called little people around him his life might not today been in such rubbelised ruins. Instead when his faux world collapsed there was no real world to support him, no everyday folk to say “Hey, this guy was good to me!”

And that is the lesson for all high-flyers and the rest of us too: Sometimes the little people are the mightiest of all.