Coronavirus: Phillip Schofield criticises ‘utterly astonishing’ government advice live on This Morning

‘If this was in a farce on the telly, I’d go, “That’s a bit far fetched”’

Phillip Schofield compared Boris Johnson’s coronavirus lockdown update to a farce as he described the “utter confusion” he felt watching Sunday night’s speech.

The TV presenter opened Monday’s This Morning by discussing with Holly Willoughby his frustration after the Prime Minister’s address “created more questions than answers”.

“The problem is, I think we’re all just about holding on… but when there is this level of confusion, it knocks you back,” Willoughby said.

“That’s the problem, we now lack clarity,” Schofield replied. “I understood until last night at seven o’clock, I understood where we were going, what was happening. Now I don’t understand.”

The pair voiced their confusion over the legality of visiting parents, after the government originally stated that you could only see one of them, which Schofield described as making “no sense whatsoever”.

Dominic Raab then told the BBC’s Today programme that you could visit two parents, only for the government to make a U-turn and say that this was “wrong”.

“You literally couldn’t write this. If this was in a farce on the telly, I’d go, ‘That’s a bit far fetched,’” Schofield said.

“It is utterly astonishing. You know that we’ve been really level on here, we’ve been really sensible, I think, on here. But now this has just tipped us over the edge today, until somebody, maybe, would come on the show and explain what it is that you actually want us to do. What are we allowed to do?”

“You made us cross today, Boris,” he concluded.