Under fire UK presenter Phillip Schofield has been ditched by his agency of 35 years, YMU, on the same day he has admitted to having an affair with a younger ITV employee.

Mary Bekhait, the Group CEO of YMU Group, said today: “Honesty and integrity are core values for YMU’s whole business, defining everything we do. Talent management is a relationship based entirely on trust.

She continued: “This week, we have learned important new information about our client Phillip Schofield. These facts contradicted what Phillip had previously told YMU, as well as
the external advisors we had brought in to support him. As a result, on Thursday we agreed to part company with Phillip, with immediate effect.”

Via his lawyers, Schofield issued the following statement in response: “It is with the most profound regret that after 35 years of being faultlessly managed by YMU I have agreed to step down from their representation with immediate effect.”

The agency drop follows Schofield’s bombshell exit last week from popular ITV show This Morning, which he had co-hosted for twenty years. That exit followed reports that his relationship with co-host Holly Willoughby had come under strain and speculation that the exit related to an affair with a younger ITV employee. Schofield said that he understood ITV had decided that “the current situation [could] not go on.”

Today, the presenter said in a statement sent to the Daily Mail: “I did have a consensual on-off relationship with a younger male colleague at This Morning. Contrary to speculation, whilst I met the man when he was a teenager and was asked to help him to get into television, it was only after he started to work on the show that it became more than just a friendship. That relationship was unwise, but not illegal. It is now over.”