It’s a full house as Schofield keeps business in the family

He made headline news when, live on breakfast television, he came out as gay. But, a year on, I can disclose that This morning presenter Phillip Schofield remains in bed with his wife, Stephanie — in a financial sense, at least.

The couple, who married in 1993 and have two daughters, molly, 27, and Ruby, 25, have just made one of the most demonstrative gestures of their continuing partnership — by buying a house together.

The acquisition was made via Fistral Properties, the company they jointly established in 2019 and which takes its name from Fistral Beach in Newquay, Cornwall, close to where Schofield grew up and where his ‘amazing’ mother, Pat, still lives.

Financial records show that the new property cost £839,428 — easily affordable for Schofield, who has enjoyed a lucrative career since his early 20s, when he became the first continuity presenter for Children’s BBC. Two decades later he signed a two- year deal, reputedly worth £5 million, with ITV, for whom he has presented This morning since 2002.

With a personal fortune now estimated at £ 9 million, he and Stephanie own a £2.6 million marital home in Henley, Oxfordshire, as well as an idyllic property in the algarve, Portugal, described as ‘every family’s dream’. and these days Schofield even produces his own Italian wine, including an award-winning white Falanghina.

many assumed that his very public acknowledgement of his sexuality would shatter all this, as well as the burgeoning professional partnership he and Stephanie have forged in Fistral Properties, of which they are the only two directors.

But the couple have confounded expectations. Far from separating, still less divorcing, they were together throughout the first of the repeated lockdowns and were joined last summer by both molly and Ruby, enjoying ‘murder-mystery’ parties and barbecues.

Schofield, 58, declines to comment on whether he’s eyeing up the new property as a bolthole for himself or whether, instead, it’s a rental investment. But he has previously emphasised that Stephanie still comes first in his life. ‘Is it possible to come out and not hurt your wife? No of course it isn’t,’ he said. ‘my greatest concern is that she is OK.’