Happy birthday Phillip!
Phillip Schofield turns 53 today.
But there’s absolutely no point getting the This Morning presenter a bottle of plonk as a pressie.
Put it this way, our Phil has already got enough wine to enjoy a bottle a day for the rest of his natural born, having not one but two wine cellars at his country pile in Henley-on-Thames.
Wooden cases are stacked floor to ceiling, all containing famous names, and TV’s favourite silver fox admits: “I have about 9,500 bottles now.
“The cellar could sustain a direct hit and survive. Come the Apocalypse, this is where I plan to hole up.
“In fact, I’d like to be buried down here preferably six months before I die!
“I look at some of the cases down there and think I could have bought a painting with that but fortunately, I’ve got an understanding wife.”
Phillip’s one of the most-famous faces on the small screen as a result of hosting so many hit TV programmes.
His latest, the hypnotism-based show You’re Back In The Room, has just started on ITV on Saturday nights.
Contestants compete after they’ve been hypnotised by Keith Barry to believe various things, such as one of them being Patrick Swayze’s character from Ghost.
It’s a far cry from the more traditional quiz shows he’s fronted such as All Star Mr & Mrs which aired its sixth series last year and sees celeb couples play to win up to £30,000 for their chosen charity.
But it’s The Cube that’s given Phillip his biggest success to date.
It’s not just the audience that laps up people trying to complete a series of challenges in a claustrophobic perspex cube to win £250,000, it’s won several awards including a trio of BAFTAs.
No doubt Phillip knew just which champagne to celebrate that with, as his path to becoming an oenophile was sparked when he was asked to introduce a compilation video for his friend Jason Donovan back in 1992.
He refused payment so Donovan’s producers, Stock, Aitken and Waterman, sent Burgundy instead.
“It came with a set of tasting notes and I started to take an interest,” reveals Phillip.
“Two years later, a friend of my wife persuaded me to join the Wine Society and the floodgates opened.
“It’s the only thing I’ve got into that I’m still passionate about and over the past decade, it’s become an obsession.
“I get a bigger buzz sitting opposite a master wine-maker at lunch than I did from interviewing Elton John, Liza Minnelli or Whitney Houston.
“Wine is a monster subject and I’ve barely scratched the surface but, after my family, wine is the biggest passion of my life without question.
“I just wish I could resist the temptation not to finish a bottle of wine, but it’s beyond me to re-cork an open bottle.
“My wife, Steph, isn’t a red-wine drinker so if I open a bottle during the week it’s just me having it.
“I don’t care what the Government says about drinking, I’m fed up being patrolled by the fun police!
“There’s nothing finer than a classic Bordeaux or a beautifully-elegant Burgundy, but I’m not a wine snob.
“I’m perfectly happy to drink £2.99 wine because I learn something from every bottle I taste.”
Unlike many wine collectors, Schofield doesn’t buy to invest.
He insists: “I’ve never bought a bottle I intended to sell. The city boys are all going bust so their wine is flooding the market.
“They drove us into this mess so we deserve the pickings of their wine! That said, if my world falls apart, my wine collection will be my pension.”
Obviously, Phil’s far too professional to ever let his hobby spill over into the day job?
“Oh, yes!” he smiles. “I remember doing This Morning with Fern once.
“I’d had a few mates over the night before, and it got very late and very messy.
“When my alarm went off, I thought: ‘I’ve made a big error, here.’
“But presenters have a thing where we can occasionally say to each other: ‘You’re going to have to drive today.’
“Fern agreed, saying: ‘Of course, no one will know.’
“Then she said: ‘Welcome to This Morning, you’ll have to excuse my friend here, he’s had a very heavy night.’
“I just thought: ‘Oh, thank you very much!’”
But while Phillip has wine worth thousands, nothing could replace a treasured item he lost almost as soon as he got it.
“It was a certificate from the ambulance service in New Zealand where we moved when I was 19,” he reveals.
“In 1982, my father Brian had a heart attack in our sitting-room and I brought him back to life with CPR. I actually lost the certificate that very night.
“I saved my dad when I was only 20 and I had to suddenly grow up.
“Seeing the fine line between life and death was terrifying, but the CPR gave him another 25 years.”
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