Craig Revel Horwood has expressed support for Phillip Schofield. Phillip, 61, stepped down with 'immediate effect' from This Morning last month, amid reports of a feud between him and co-host Holly Willoughby.
Following his resignation, Phillip then admitted to having an affair with a much younger male colleague while working at ITV. In his statement, he also apologised for 'lying' to staff, friends and family when they questioned him about affair rumours
Now, Strictly Come Dancing judge Craig, 58, has called for Phillip to be left alone. In an interview with Best magazine, he Craig said: "I think Phillip Schofield is entitled to a private life.
"Yes, he lied to his colleagues, which is wrong, but he wanted to protect himself and his former lover. It pales in comparison to a war, where innocent people are dying. It's not like he's murdered anyone."
He continued: "How many CEOs have extra-marital affairs with secretaries? A lot. It doesn't make sense to me that it became quite as huge as it did. Leave him alone now, I say."
It comes after Phillip's BBC interview, in which he claimed that the scrutiny he was facing for his affair could be down to homophobia. And in a similar vein to Craig's CEO comments, Phillip argued that he would be facing less backlash if the affair had been with a woman.
Former rugby captain Gareth Thomas, who worked closely with Phillip while appearing on Dancing On Ice in 2013, has also argued that some of the backlash directed at the TV presenter could be down to homophobia. Speaking to Wales Online, he said: "It's interesting. You do wonder if it would be different, and if you're wondering that then the reality is it probably would be.
"There's a lot of 'he said, she said' around it, a lot of conspiracy theories and intrusion as there always is. So I'm trying to make conscious decisions now on facts, which is a struggle in the society that we live in because everybody is a journalist now."
He added: "I do think that when it comes to that claim that he made, there can be an argument for it. The fact that we're questioning it and the fact that we potentially feel it could be [homophobic] I think says a lot about discriminative nature and how the marginalised characteristic of a person opens them up to discrimination and stereotypes that other people hold".
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