Earlier this year, producers found the perfect candidate for the next series of Channel 5's Cast Away: national treasure turned pariah Phillip Schofield. There was just one problem: they couldn't get him. For three months, Clive Tulloh, executive producer of Burning Bright Productions, struggled to connect with the agentless Schofield, who had been seemingly cut off from the trappings of celebrity life a year earlier when his affair with a runner on This Morning (who was 15 when they met, and 20 when they began a sexual relationship) was exposed.
When Tulloh finally got word - through Schofield's daughter, Molly - "it took some convincing... he didn't like the idea" of being sent to an island off the coast of Madagascar to fend for himself for ten days. "He thought about it for a long time."
Producers started looking for the presenter's parental home in Henley in June. It was inevitable that he would have to deal with his spectacular fall from grace - but they were not prescriptive about the 'arc' that Schofield's story would take, explains Guy Davies, editor-in-chief at Channel 5. Signing him was also a guess: Away is "a process you go through in solitude, and we don't know what's going to happen on the other side either," he says. "It's a location and a process that allows you to look inside your head a little bit, explore and challenge yourself, and try to survive. And I think he found it an interesting challenge to do, both physically and mentally."
And so, after watching previous episodes and more rumination, he decided, "I want to do it; I rejected everything else. But what really appeals to me is that I'm alone and I'm filming, and I love that."
According to Schofield, this was the ultimate chance for redemption: a way to monologue - unchallenged - about the perceived ills that have befallen him since he was axed from This Morning last year. (Plus, as proven by I'm A Celebrity, subjecting unpopular public figures to some harsh climates does wonders for their appeal, and their bank balances - Schofield's fee was "absolutely in line" with former castaways like Ruby Wax, says Tulloh .)
The expedition began in late August, when Schofield and Tulloh made a mammoth 32-hour journey (via Paris, to avoid paparazzi, plus a five-hour wait on the airstrip in Jeddah due to fog) to reach the remote East African enclave. Producers stayed on a nearby island, a 15-minute speedboat ride away, and sent Schofield with three cameras and their well wishes.
Any doubts about the images they might receive were immediately dispelled. "He's a real TV nerd," Tulloh says of Schofield's film talent; The show's editors "can't get over how good his footage is." The cameraman who had to send drones over Schofield's island to capture him climbing a mountain or fishing "was almost nervous about how good Phil was at filming."
That glut of tape, according to this newspaper's review, has made for "compelling television" - a lone positive in a sea of criticism that called the show "a cross between self-abuse and self-promotion," drowned out by the "colossal scale of its self-aggrandizing victimhood ."
Besides the question of whether he should have played the leading role in his own hero story fifteen months after his fall from grace, there was one big question: were the loneliness and hunger real?
But Schofield "really" went it alone, even refusing a bag of rice from Tulloh (the producer says if he had accepted it would have been revealed on the show). Although we see Schofield disappointed in the final episode after failing to secure a catch, his ten days on the island developed a serious scratching habit. As he left, he told Tulloh that he had eaten ten crabs - and that they were "pretty big," Tulloh says. "I think he was very lucky that he didn't have any digestive problems... when you get washed up [there] now it would be even more difficult, because he has severely depleted that island's crab population.'
Although shellfish didn't cause an stomach upset, Schofield called the producers every day around 7 a.m. "Every morning he had to call and do a health check because we wanted to make sure he made it through the night," says Tulloh. During that call, he also told them about his plans for the day so the drone could be used up.
Schofield always carried a walkie-talkie with him for security reasons, which he only used when he thought he had discovered the footprints of a large cat in the sand (he is advised to build a large fire, which then unfortunately burns down his camp). Physical danger was not the only concern. "Mentally he was very strong, but obviously we were concerned and Channel 5 was concerned," Tulloh said. "He could call his therapist if necessary."
The "riskiest moment" came when Schofield decided to climb the island's mountain on the seventh day. He had originally told Tulloh that he planned to do this on day two or three, while he was still strong enough. "I climbed it myself, it is almost steep in places; it is a struggle and it takes a few hours," Tulloh explains. But "he procrastinated and procrastinated. And I was just afraid that he would... we're all in the hands of the gods of these programs, in the sense that all someone has to do is slip, and then it's dangerous." That he did this after a week, when his energy was severely depleted, "was the biggest danger," Tulloh says. "I think he ate an extra crab the night before."
The mission was a success; Schofield was released from self-inflicted captivity three days later. (His feast consisted of a "large beer" and a simple omelet, as he feared his stomach couldn't handle much, probably from moving back and forth between hunger and seafood dinners.)
Then came perhaps the biggest challenge for the show's creators: getting the three episodes ready for the masses in as many weeks. "It's crazy, we've never made a program like this before," says Tulloh (normally editing an hour of film takes almost two months). But after a summer of Olympics, Euros and Paralympics, in which viewers "watched BBC One, ITV, Channel 4, everyone will have forgotten about Channel 5," was the logic of Ben Frow, the channel's Chief Content Officer. According to Tulloh, his view was: "I want something that comes out at the end of September and reminds people that Channel 5 is still there. So I think it definitely did that."
For Frow, he adds, the channel's programs should always be "about people who are loved or loved by the British public." Schofield, who now definitely belonged to the latter camp, seemed the obvious choice. But did he really deserve the platform? The programs are less a mea culpa than a series of bitter rants about the many people Schofield believes have wronged him. "I don't have any question whether we should have done it or not," says Davies of the "controversial" events that have engulfed the presenter since last year, adding that Cast Away was "a good place for him to tell his story ." It "has definitely been a conversation starter. It obviously made a lot of noise."
Tulloh admits to being surprised by the strength of the public response. 'I hope he has thick skin because it's quite tough. I mean, the reaction to the show is the reaction to him, really, right?... It was pretty brutal, how [reviewers] approached him. I thought people might be a little more forgiving, but that doesn't seem to be the case."
They are happy with the viewing figures (the first episode attracted 1.5 million viewers); experience has confirmed to them that the format should return. "We will certainly look at it again," says Davies, "but I wouldn't say at this stage who we might have our eyes on."
Both recently connected with Schofield, who Tulloh says "is a much stronger and happier person because he created this program... It has helped him personally. I don't know whether that is the role of television programs. But for Phil, I think it's a great thing to do."