Life's What You Make It

by Phillip Schofield

  PHILLIP SCHOFIELD

  * * *

  LIFE’S WHAT YOU MAKE IT

  The Autobiography

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Thank You

  About the Author

  Phillip Schofield is one of our most loved TV presenters, having spent nearly 40 years hosting some of the biggest shows on screen. Since gaining popularity working as a children's presenter for the BBC hosting The Broom Cupboard in 1985, Phillip has gone on to present multiple series of Going Live and more recently, Dancing On Ice, The Cube, 5 Gold Rings, Mr & Mrs and two Royal Weddings.

  He has performed on stage as Joseph in Joseph and the Amazing Technicolour Dreamcoat and as Doctor Dolittle.

  Phillip has hosted ITV's This Morning since 2002, now alongside his "on screen wife" Holly Willoughby, which has won the National Television Award for Best Daytime Programme fifteen times.

  For Steph, Molly and Ruby,

  Three remarkable women in my life, who, no matter what, still continue to love me and who have saved me more times than they will ever know. I love you all so very, very much.

  Writing this book has been a fascinating experience for me, a sort of controlled unravelling of my head, in some ways a reboot, remembering things I didn’t realize I’d forgotten. I didn’t think for a second, as I sat with my fingers poised over my laptop keyboard at the start of this adventure, that I’d learn anything new about myself. As it turns out, I have. I’ve always documented my life in one way or another, keeping diaries and even jotting down lines that I imagined would go in my autobiography one day if I was to ever write one. I even wrote what I thought would be the first line, a line that ended up in this very book, when I was just fourteen. My diaries have helped me as I’ve written, and this 1986 diary has ‘Life’s What You Make It’ written on the front. It rang true then, and it rings true still.

  Prologue

  On 7 February 2020 at 9.45 a.m. my thumb hesitated briefly over my phone. I looked nervously at those around me, then pressed send and posted these words (and some others) on Instagram:

  You never know what’s going on in someone’s seemingly perfect life …

  The response was instantaneous and huge, a massive wave of surprised attention. In my life, I like to think I’ve been honest and open, mostly. Now, hopefully, I can add some detail to that statement and tell you who I am, the real person behind the bloke you know from the telly and the life that led up to those words, long before they were even a spark of awareness in my head. Some of my life you may already know. Here’s the rest.

  I’ve been asked to write a book for as long as I can remember. At first, I didn’t think I’d lived enough, then I was so busy and distracted I couldn’t be bothered. In more recent years, when the pressure to write my story got seriously intense, there was always a very painful consideration: I knew where it would, eventually, have to go, unless I wasn’t truthful. I decided that I couldn’t lie, so I never agreed to write it.

  As you probably know, I have recently decided that the truth was the only thing that could save me. Let me stress, right from the start, that my ‘truth’ took a very long time to make itself clear to me. I have never deliberately hidden anything, but as my psychologist has pointed out on a number of occasions, we humans are complicated. We can evolve within ourselves. If we are lucky, we find clarity in our lives. As I got older, that is exactly what happened: I discovered something about myself that I had no idea was there. I found clarity, and that has taken a long time to process. So, it’s as a by-product of a lot of pain – pain that continues – that this book can finally be written. That, coupled with the fact that, as I type, I’m sitting in lockdown as the Covid-19 pandemic has put the world on pause, so I have a shitload of time on my hands!

  Writing this book has been a fascinating experience for me, a sort of controlled unravelling of my head, in some ways a reboot, remembering things I didn’t realize I’d forgotten. I didn’t think for a second, as I sat with my fingers poised over my laptop keyboard at the start of this adventure, that I’d learn anything new about myself. As it turns out, I have.

  As I wrote about the big, conflicting decisions that I’ve made in my life, a pattern has emerged. I stress and I fret, I worry and tie myself up in ever-tighter knots. I keep myself awake at night in never-ending loops of turmoil, but the outcome always seems to be the same. As I enter into a huge life choice, it would appear that I already know what I’m going to do, it just takes me a while to get there – sometimes overnight, sometimes considerably longer. I seem to put myself through rounds of torture before I’m prepared to take a life-changing step. That’s odd for me, because when it comes to major career choices I trust my judgement implicitly and I’ll willingly jump into a new challenge without any great analysis – I go with my gut and act instinctively. Not so in my private life. I strap myself to the rack and let my mind stretch me out in unnecessary, elongated distress.

  I’ve discovered that, in later life, I’ve become increasingly more adept at creating these ‘thought loops’ in my head. One big, mentally destructive loop encompassing everything, and then there are many smaller loops of unfixable issues around that, like planets orbiting the sun, going round and round in endless, exhausting cycles. I have recognized that they were always a part of my analysis process, but in recent times, these loops have been very much bigger and immensely challenging. Seemingly unfathomable, uncontrollable issues and impossible decisions. I’ve also learned that, in time, most things work out for the best, that each loop, taken in isolation, can be broken. With help, I have taken a careful note of this new knowledge and I will strive to be better at ‘loop management’.

  Perhaps most importantly of all, I’ve learned that we are indeed the masters of our own destiny, but life doesn’t happen to us without the people we love and the people who love us. We can’t do it on our own – we all need help, and we all need to trust that our families love us because we’re worth loving, and that our friends are there because they care, no matter what. Take it from someone who has sat on the very edge and looked over: things do work out, things do get better.

  It’s so easy to go through our lives so quickly that we don’t take the time to stop, look around, look up and appreciate the moments that should be celebrated. We’re always looking to the ‘next’ rather than enjoying the ‘now’. Those moments can be huge leaps forward or even the very tiny everyday steps, but just pause for that moment, give yourself permission to reflect on an achievement before you rush on. Now I’ve stopped, I’ve looked up, taken a deep breath and quietly celebrated in my head. I made it this far, I’m happy to have done the things that I’ve done, I’m grateful for everyone who has been with me on my life adventure. I most certainly could not have done it on my own. Everyone we meet is an influence on us in one way or another; they shape us, they guide us, they teach us to be wise or wary. So as I have taken a moment to pause and look around, I see you, we’re still here, we’re okay, and life is there waiting for us, if we are willing to allow ourselves to live it. Life, it seems, is what you make it.

  Well, then, here we go, finally. I hope I’m what you expected me to be.

  1

  ‘Coke!’ barked the large, bright-red man in front of me. At the age of fifteen, and safely separated from his painfully sunburnt fists and bice
ps by a wooden counter, I waited for a few seconds to see if he followed that with ‘please’. He didn’t. Game on.

  I was born in Oldham, but I lived in Newquay, Cornwall, from the age of eighteen months. The beach was core to the life of the town, our family and my school friends, though I have a problem with sand (I’ll come to that later). As the long summer holidays rolled out in front of me, the first thing I had to do was try and secure a summer job. As with most of the county, making enough money during the summer months means the difference between an easy winter and a difficult one. Obviously, for a business, hay in August has to be made to pay the employees’ wages in February. For me personally, though, I needed enough money to buy my Christmas presents and some dodgy seventies Hai Karate talc, which I hoped might impress Louise Tucker. It never did. I did get to kiss her, however, when I was Prince Charming in our school panto and she was Cinderella. Louise lived on Pentire headland, like me, and was part of our school-bus gang. I never stood a chance, but she did appear on my This is Your Life twenty-five years later. Result.

  The ice-cream kiosk was at the bottom of the steps at the Pentire end of Fistral beach. Landing a summer job in there was a triumph. Reasonable money, I could choose my hours, and occasionally a Pink Panther chocolate bar was thrown in, too. I have no idea why that was my sweet of choice, but it was bright pink and looked a bit avant garde. Because I was fickle, later I was to choose Walnut Whips, but I went off those because my nan kept asking for the walnut: ‘Ooh, can I have the walnut off the top, Phillip?’ Obviously, I said yes, but internally I was screaming, ‘What’s the point of having a Walnut Whip if I don’t get to eat the bloody walnut?’ Anyway, soon after, I moved on to Bounty, and stayed there for life. (The dark-chocolate ones are the best.)

  My nan was a hard, uncompromising Northerner. Walking into her kitchen was a horror show – she would eat anything and everything. I’d sometimes pop in after school and there’d be a couple of hearts bubbling away in a pan on the stove. I deeply regret not getting her recipe for muffins but, other than that, I wasn’t impressed with her cooking. The conversation would usually run something like this:

  A terrific nan, not such a great mother.

  ‘Phillip, you’ve left your chicken.’

  ‘It’s fatty.’

  ‘There is no fat on a chicken.’

  Well, on hers, there was. She was a fun grandmother, but a terrible mother. She could regale me with the most wonderful stories, yet would show no approval or love to my mum. The way Nan treated her daughter did, however, benefit me and my brother, Tim. Every bit of affection my mum wished her mother had shown her, our mum compensated for by showering the two of us with love. She still does.

  So here I am. It’s a beautiful sunny day, I’ve run barefoot, at top speed, for no reason, from the guest house we ran ten minutes from the beach. I never wore shoes – the soles of my feet were like leather – and if I wasn’t barefoot, I was wearing flip-flops. There’s still a gap between my big toes and the ones next to them where the rubber gripper went through. My shift has started, I’m in a great mood, and up comes the rude, red fool for his Coke. If he had said thank you, or smiled, that would have been that; we would both have gone about our days, enjoying the beach. But he didn’t, he just stared me down, with his bright-red face and his peeling back, standing menacingly at the front of the queue. Every morning, for just such an obnoxious customer, who treated summer workers like something on his shoe, I arrived early, took a can of Coke from the shelf and banged it swiftly ten times on the wooden floor of the kiosk. Not enough to dent it, just enough to make the contents angry and explosive. Then it was put back in its own special place, waiting for a moment like this.

  ‘Sure,’ I said. ‘Anything else?’

  ‘Crisps!’

  ‘What flavour can I get you?’

  ‘Plain.’

  ‘Fine.’ (You arsehole.)

  He threw his money on the counter, turned and headed off down the beach, with his crisps and a specially prepped can of fizz. As I served the other customers, I watched, my eyes carefully following him down the steps and on to the sand as he picked his way through the jumble of towels, inflatables and windbreakers. I knew I’d lose sight of him, but it didn’t matter, I’d soon see where he had set up camp for the day … three … two … one … there he is! From about a hundred feet away came the brown, sugary plume, bursting from the confines of the can, climbing up, up, into the air. That brief, delicious moment when it paused before gravity beckoned it back to the beach and the bright-red man with the peeling back below. He was soaked: bald head, beach towel, too-small shorts. An almost imperceptible smile washed across my face. As he bellowed, it was only moments before the second instalment began … the wasps!

  I knew he’d be back, I knew he’d be furious, as the others had been before him. I knew I’d have to be careful, because I’m allergic to wasp stings (I’ll come back to that). I would feign horror at his stickiness, apologize profusely, give him a replacement, ‘Better open that one carefully. Did you shake the first one at all?’

  If you’re reading this, and you ever got sprayed by a can of Coke on the Pentire end of Fistral beach, pleased to meet you again and thank you.

  I’ve always been thankful that my mum, Pat, and dad, Brian, fell in love with Cornwall on their honeymoon. Don’t get me wrong, I’m proud of my Lancashire roots, but to grow up in the place where everybody else came on their holidays was lucky and then some. Mum and Dad had moved down from Oldham and my dad started work with Bilbo, a fledgling surfboard company. He was one of those guys who could turn his hand to pretty much anything, always busy, never still. In fact, the only time we ever rowed was when I said, ‘I’m bored.’ He couldn’t understand what I meant by it.

  ‘Get up, get off your arse and find something to do.’

  He made the first surfboards in the UK. The factory on Pargolla Road was an adventure in itself, foam boards ready to be fibreglassed, each individually designed and coated in resin. I wish I had a picture of the resin room; there was every colour you can imagine, dripping waterfalls of colour that hardened into their own unique artwork. The fibreglass itched like hell, though, if you got it on your skin.

  Downstairs was a vending machine that made the best chicken soup ever. It had never been within ten miles of a chicken, but its fakeness was delicious and is a lasting memory. I’m lucky to have eaten some of the best food in the best restaurants in the world, but give me a Pot Noodle or a Vesta Chow Mein and I’m yours. On the subject of food, if you ever ate a Matthews pasty in Newquay, you’ll probably feel the same tantalizing thrill as I do when I mention them. Long since closed, their pasties were unbeatable. I think they used flaky pastry, but the meat juices would run out and caramelize on the underside. The pastry was just the right side of burned. (If you know how they did it, and you can re-create it, I’ll come round.) No one could beat them but, even now, the family tradition when I go back to Cornwall is a pasty one day, and then the next day Flounders fish and chips, eaten out of the paper while overlooking Little Fistral, the wide Atlantic spread out in front of us. If you left the beach and travelled in a straight line, the next landfall would be Newfoundland.

  Newquay has some of the best surfing beaches in the world. The swell can form perfect waves that peel over majestically before crashing on to the golden sand, but it can also be brutal and unruly. I can stand for hours on the headland and watch the sea with its wild, untamable power relentlessly crashing against the cliffs. The plaintive cry of the seagulls and the salty tang in the air always reboots my head. The reef off Little Fistral is quite close to the surface, so on a stormy day it can create an awesome sight with the ‘Cribbar’ wave. It’s a monster, also known as ‘the Widow Maker’. Climbing to over thirty feet, it was first surfed in 1966 and now, experienced big-wave surfers from all over the world put their trust in their skill and take their lives by the throat to ride it.

  You’d think, with that surfboard heritage, I’d be able to
surf. But I couldn’t afford a wetsuit, I was painfully skinny and it was just too bloody cold, so I never really took to surfing. I can, however, body surf, which is cheaper, because you don’t need any equipment. One of my proudest moments was when my mum and dad went to a surfing museum while on holiday in Hawaii and one of the boards my dad had made was hanging as an exhibit. He was thrilled. By the way, he couldn’t surf either … same reason.

  Mum and Dad in Hawaii.

  We took in visitors at our six-bedroom guest house on Lawton Close. Long hours and very hard work for my mum, but my grandma and grandad came down from Oldham every summer to help, which was great, apart from the fact that it wasn’t, because my grandma drove my mum mad. However, Mum’s hard work and our happy guests earned us a happy Christmas.

  My dad was always at work in the garage, fixing things, making things. He was a French polisher by trade, so he was always polishing something for someone, so he had the best smell. He always smelled of wood. To me, my dad was made of mahogany.

  Stood at the front door of the house on Pentire with my grandma Hilda and grandad Harold, who were down for the summer.

  In the summer we all slept in the garage, which Dad had converted into three bedrooms. During the winter, when the guests had left, I got the pick of the bedrooms. Which would I choose this year? Blue, yellow, pink, green? The yellow one upstairs was always my favourite, for two reasons. Firstly, I could climb out of the window, up the slate tiles and sit on the flat roof above my window. On a starry night, the view was beautiful, especially if I had a packet of Cadets! My best mate and I decided one summer holiday that we would smoke a packet of every brand of cigarettes from Mr Snell’s tobacconist’s down the road (there were lots more brands back then). Like a couple of elderly connoisseurs, we’d sit on the headland, open a new brand, and say, ‘Hmm, I thought the Everest were much mintier than the Consulate,’ or ‘I thought the long, thin More would last longer,’ or ‘Christ! Capstan Full Strength?! Mate, I’m going to puke.’ I know, I know, how utterly stupid we were, but those were heady days, when no one had told us what was going to kill us. For my night-time outing on the roof that particular summer, I’d chosen Cadets. I thought them ‘very smooth’.