Phillip Schofield: 'I was bad at taking drugs in the eighties'

Phillip Schofield has admitted he was “bad at taking drugs” and once took a pair of German prostitutes for lunch instead of watching the Berlin Wall being brought down.

The This Morning presenter opened up about his colourful past in an interview by co-presenter Holly Willoughby for fashion magazine Hunger.

Schofield, who fronted children’s programme Going Live! in the late eighties, said he was a “lad” and found it hard to maintain his squeaky clean image.

“It wasn’t a case of hiding it. I did the same as everybody else. I was a lad; we partied a bit, but I didn’t hide anything. It’s just that nobody bothered to look in the right place,” he said.

But the 51-year-old confirmed his partying was mainly limited to drink. Speaking to Willoughby, he said: “By the way, when I say partying, my weakness has always been booze. I never got into drugs, because I wasn’t very good at it.”

Schofield said he learned as a public figure not to go out in central London. “We were simply getting leathered in Chiswick where we lived at the time. Everybody knew us and nobody was bothered, and nobody would tell,” he said.

The presenter also spoke about a last-minute trip to watch the Berlin Wall being taken down, which resulted in him and a friend taking two German prostitutes to lunch.

“We got in the car and we drove through Checkpoint Charlie with these two East German hookers, no questions asked…We ended up drinking vodka and eating caviar,” he said.

Schofield also revealed his covert tactics to deal with nuisance Twitter followers. Rather than rising to the bait, he follows them, sends a direct message, unfollows them, watches their outrage and then blocks them.

He added: “I have a secret account so that I can leave it a day or so, and then occasionally go back and have a look and see if they’re still furious!”

Tweeting about the interview he said: “I’m in the current edition of @rankinphoto’s ‘Hunger’ magazine. @hollywills interviewed me & was outrageous ;)”