On Saturday Phillip Schofield sent me an email. Unhappy that last week I had questioned the truth about some of his claims on the Channel 5 television show Cast Away, he used the email as an opportunity to slur his former best friend and This Morning ­sidekick, Holly Willoughby.

Schofield asked me not to publish the contents of his message, but suffice it to say he made an accusation that confirmed he is not happy that his career lies in the gutter while Holly is still one of the most sought after women in showbusiness.

And I wasn’t the only one to receive new information relating to Schofield’s feelings towards his former co-star.

His unofficial PR machine has been out in force this week, it seems, with ‘friends’ of the disgraced ­presenter telling one tabloid newspaper he had sent Holly a message on WhatsApp the day before news of his This Morning axe became public, claiming she had ‘brought him down’. ­

Meanwhile another newspaper claimed that Phil dislikes Holly so much, he now refers to her as ‘the witch’ and even uses the accompanying emoji to describe her in messages to his friends if she comes up.

It’s all rather unedifying for Phil who, despite his admission of an ‘unwise but not illegal’ affair with a much younger man, remains one of the most accomplished broadcasters of his generation. One of his former colleagues rang me yesterday to say: ‘He really has lost the plot now, hasn’t he?’

Those who were around when the pair fell out in spring last year – in the aftermath of Phil’s brother Timothy’s conviction for sexual offences against a teenage boy and as rumours about Phil’s own relationship began to swirl – are not surprised that the presenter, 62, has taken it all so badly.

After all, it was he who gave Holly the chance of a lifetime by insisting to ITV bosses that she replace Fern Britton as his This Morning co-host back in 2009 ­following their success as a duo presenting Dancing On Ice.

‘Phil always took the credit for Holly’s success,’ said an insider. ‘And boy did he like to tell people that, including Holly. She, of course, knew he orchestrated the ­opportunity and was always very grateful, but it was thrown in her face quite a lot. How long did Holly have to keep thanking him for?

‘But now Phil is coming across as increasingly bitter about the end of his career at ITV and he is totally rewriting history.’

In May last year, with reports emerging that the pair were ‘barely speaking’ but before Phil stepped down from This Morning, he addressed rumours of their fallout in a statement – but without telling her. Despite his insistence all was well, the cracks were definitely beginning to show.

‘The last few weeks haven’t been easy for either of us,’ he declared. ‘As I have said before, Holly is my rock. We’re the best of friends – as always, she is an incredible support on screen, behind the scenes and on the phone. Holly has always been there for me, through thick and thin. And I’ve been there for her.’

One of Holly’s crimes in Phil’s eyes was that she didn’t issue a similar statement backing him.

‘That would have been a stupid thing to do. Why would she have done that?’ asks a friend of the star now. ‘What was she supposed to do? Put an advert out saying he was great?’

I recall a conversation I had with Holly back in 2022 at the launch of her lifestyle brand, Wylde Moon, at the London Coliseum.

We were ­discussing a friend of mine who was being blamed for her husband’s shortcomings (she had stood up for my friend on This Morning, so I was passing on thanks for her kind words).

Holly told me how much she hates it when women are blamed for a man’s misdemeanours – it is one of her big bugbears and she spoke passionately about it.

‘This is exactly what Phil is doing now,’ says a source familiar with the situation. ‘He is entirely ­forgetting that he stood down from This Morning and then quit ITV as a whole after admitting to having an affair with a much younger ­colleague. How on earth was that Holly’s fault? Phil is lashing out at her, presumably because he’s bitter. It’s a case of ‘let’s blame the woman’. He clearly wanted to ­reignite this feud, and he’s got exactly what he wants.’

Friends of Holly’s also point out how ‘sick’ it is that he is lashing out at her – in emails, via friends and in coded references on Cast Away –given the terrifying plot against her which emerged in a recent court case. Security guard Gavin Plumb was sentenced to a minimum of 16 years in prison for planning to kidnap, rape and murder her. It is almost a year to the day that she found out about his vile plans.

So what is the truth about the relationship between Holly and Phil – or Phil and Holly as he preferred – and their fallout after 14 years of sharing not just a sofa, but much of their lives?

Was their friendship an act all along? Nothing more than a ­performance – albeit a convincing one – for their hordes of This ­Morning fans?

Undeniably they were best friends. On screen they giggled in tandem and enjoyed all-night drinking ­sessions after the National Television Awards. Holly was famously at Phil’s side as he came out live on television back in February 2020.

Off screen, they would share bike rides, Sunday lunches at one ­another’s houses and even had joint holidays at an exclusive resort on the Algarve where they have ­neighbouring villas. These were not the actions of people who were merely pretending to be fast friends.

‘Queuegate’ – when Holly and Phil were accused of jumping the line to see the late Queen Elizabeth lying in state at Westminster Hall – certainly put a strain on the friendship and should not be underestimated as a significant factor in its demise.

But their relationship truly began to fracture over the problem of Phil’s brother Timothy Schofield. He was convicted in April last year of 11 sexual offences involving a teenager between October 2016 and October 2019.

Phil has accused Holly of putting her ‘brand’ above him during the furore that surrounded the trial. It is claimed she was kept largely in the dark until his brother was actually on trial and was unaware of the full details of his paedophile brother’s crimes.

But the truth, I’m told, is that Phil told ITV about the forthcoming court appearance and agreed with his bosses – including editor Martin Frizell – that he would step away from This Morning until the whole sordid incident was over.

He also said that he had told police after his brother confessed to him, although sources close to Holly say he did not. ‘Both Holly and ITV say that Phil told them he had gone to the police about his brother after he confessed it all, but she insists he didn’t,’ says a source.

‘That is where the fallout got really bad. So what was she supposed to do? Put out a statement then? That’s just ridiculous.’

As for ITV, they were growing fed up with Phil in general. ­Rumblings of his relationship with his much younger colleague were starting to circulate.

Sources on This Morning say that Frizell was ‘growing tired of clearing up Schofield’s mess’ and, after years of close friendship, he backed away.

Apparently, Phil also blames Frizell for mishandling the ­Queuegate drama in September 2022, claiming that he did not want to go to Westminster Hall at all and knew how tone-deaf the whole episode would appear.

Frizell is understood to be one of the ‘three s***s’ which he described on his Cast Away show last week. Frizell, a television veteran who is married to the presenter Fiona Phillips, further infuriated Phil because he took Holly’s side throughout the fallout.

One of the other ‘s***s’ is understood to be ITV’s head of daytime Emma Gormley. Highly thought of, she was very much Team Holly during the This Morning ­meltdown and was often her ­confidante throughout the difficulties that came with it.

‘In the end, they simply didn’t like Phil,’ says an ITV insider.

Sources at the channel also say when things got difficult, Phil would tell his bosses that he feared he would kill himself – as he revealed on Cast Away last week.

But last May he finally agreed to stand down after his fallout with Holly, 43, became front page news for almost two weeks.

In a statement on his own Instagram page, he said: ‘Throughout my career in TV – including in the very difficult last few days – I have always done my best to be ­honourable and kind.

‘I understand that ITV has decided the current situation can’t go on, and I want to do what I can to protect the show that I love. So I have agreed to step down from This Morning with immediate effect, in the hope that the show can move forward to a bright future. I’d like to thank everyone who has supported me – especially This Morning’s amazing viewers – and I’ll see you all for the Soap Awards next month.’

It was at that time that I wrote a story which stated that Phil had enjoyed a close friendship with a younger colleague – which left him furious and prompted his friends to warn me I was going to be sued.

Indeed, Phil complained to the press regulator IPSO about the article, claiming it was not true.

But, just a week later, he decided to come clean and admit the affair to me and that he had lied. In a jaw-dropping statement, he described the relationship as ‘unwise but not illegal’ and said he had stepped down from ITV.

‘That was none of Holly’s doing,’ pointed out her friend. ‘Yet he is blaming her for his downfall. It’s just stupid now.’

Following his admission, Holly took some time off, but returned to the This Morning sofa last June when she hosted with Josie ­Gibson and began the show with the now-famous address to viewers: ‘Firstly, are you OK? I hope so.’

At that time, I’m told there was some communication between Phil and Holly but it was somewhat ‘frosty’. Phil did get back in touch with her when her kidnap ordeal became public.

‘But that all seems like a long time ago now,’ said one source close to the former friends. ‘Phil was kind then but now his gloves are well and truly off.’

As for Holly, she refused to be drawn into the row yesterday. But TV insiders are concerned that it is now gathering steam again.

‘Phil seems determined to keep going and going on this,’ said one friend of Holly’s. ‘You just have to remember that Phil lied to a lot of people in his life so why would he be telling the truth now?’