Phillip Schofield ‘made a mistake and one accepts that’ says his This Morning colleague Gyles Brandreth as he insists  the show is ‘one of the happiest places I’ve worked’

• British presenter Gyles Brandreth opens up about his penchant for chatting 
• READ MORE: Four-poster for ONE! Are separate bedrooms the secret to King Charles and Queen Camilla’s happy marriage?

Gyles Brandreth knows I want to ask him about Phillip Schofield, but he’s doing his best to put it off. 

‘I’ve made it a rule that I don’t say critical things of other people,’ he says several times during an opening monologue at his house in Barnes that’s both wildly entertaining and evasive.

‘Words are my passion,’ says this flamboyantly eloquent man who’s taking a solo show to the Edinburgh Festival next month and then on tour around the country. ‘My wife said, ‘I’ve got the title for you – Gyles Brandreth Can’t Stop Talking!’

Michele, his wife for half a century, has a point. Gyles once held the world record for the longest after-dinner speech and is proud of having spoken without hesitation, repetition or deviation for many years on BBC Radio 4’s Just A Minute.

You may have seen him on the telly recently talking about his friendship with our new King and Queen or his bestselling biography Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait, or caught Gyles telling stories on the sofa on This Morning where he’s a regular. So he knows I’m bound to ask him about Schofield, who resigned as co-host of that show and subsequently admitted he’d lied to everyone there about an affair with a much younger male runner.

Gyles (pictured) is at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe from 2-27 August then on tour from 1 September-17 January

‘Oh look!’ says Gyles, leaping to his feet to distract me with the battered but magnificent sight of Dame Judi Dench’s childhood toy, given to him for the teddy bear museum he founded and which is now in Newby Hall near Ripon in Yorkshire.

‘Look at this,’ he says again, offering a framed photo of himself with a dozen friends, all theatrical dames, on stage at the London Palladium for his birthday in March. They include Joanna Lumley, Sheila Hancock and Patricia Routledge, who received a standing ovation at the age of 94.

‘We had over a thousand years of theatrical experience on the stage. There was poetry, singing and dancing. It was hilarious. I was 75 so we decided to raise £75,000 for Great Ormond Street, which had so helped my grandson. Kitt was diagnosed with cancer at just 18 months old and spent nearly a year in hospital.’

Happily, Kitt is now cancer-free at the age of seven. ‘We played a video of him ringing the bell, as you do at Great Ormond Street when you finish your treatment. Then Joan Collins performed John Lennon’s Imagine to the little boy. There wasn’t a dry eye in the house.’

Gyles could go on like this all afternoon. We haven’t even got onto his relationship with senior royals or the novelty jumpers for which he’s known.

‘Look, I had this made specially for an event I did last night with Camilla at Hampton Court Palace,’ he says, holding up a sweater in pillarbox red with golden letters that stand for Camilla Regina. ‘The King said, “Are you sure? It would make a marvellous hearth rug”‘

He does the voice, of course. Audiences at Edinburgh will get a chance to hear all this and more, including some splendid but surprisingly salty tales about filming Gogglebox with Sheila Hancock and Carol Vorderman, which are unrepeatable here. 

‘I did Gogglebox with Sheila Hancock and at the end of it she was made a dame,’ he says. ‘I then did it with Maureen Lipman, and at the end of it she was made a dame. Joanna Lumley? She was made a dame. My wife said, “The Queen must be watching Gogglebox thinking, ‘Those poor women, with you hour after hour, they deserve a reward.”’

His Edinburgh audience will also get to ask one question about anything they like. So Gyles, what happens if someone shouts – as I’m tempted to do now – the name of Phillip Schofield?

Once, during a recording of Just A Minute, Gyles admitted that in his youth he had a secret crush on Queen Camilla. Both pictured together

‘I might pretend I’ve misheard and tell my story about Paul Scofield, the great actor,’ he says. ‘Or I could say I remember seeing Phillip in Dr Dolittle. He was brilliant. I could also say I enjoyed working with him on This Morning and wish him well. Life is tough at times.’

OK, but how does Gyles feel about the manner of his former colleague’s departure? 

‘Well, he made his decision independently of what then transpired, what we then discovered.’ Schofield quit then gave an interview admitting he’d deceived his colleagues for years but insisting the affair was ‘unwise but not illegal’.

‘He decided to step down. It wasn’t something I discussed with him. He says he made a mistake and one accepts that.’

Former presenters and guests have said there was a bad atmosphere on This Morning, so is that true in his experience?

‘Hand on heart, in my two years there I’ve found it to be one of the happiest places I’ve worked.’

His marriage seems equally happy. He and Michele met at Oxford University, married in 1973 and have three grown-up children – Aphra, Benet and Saethryd – and seven grandchildren.

Gyles was Conservative MP for the City of Chester for five years until the Labour landslide of 1997.

‘I was a member of Parliament, until the people spoke. The b*****ds!’

He’s hamming that up, but there was also a sense at the time of being set free. ‘Michele said to me, “You can do anything you want now.”‘

So Gyles took his own show Zipp! to the Edinburgh Festival, performing fragments of 100 musicals in 100 minutes. ‘We won the audience vote for the most popular show on the Fringe. We took it on tour and ended up in the West End. It was a dream come true.’

He’s been back to Edinburgh several times and is excited to return this year before taking his Can’t Stop Talking! show on tour. Members of the audience will be invited to choose from a menu of possible stories which could, for example, include his close relationship with the Royal Family.

Elizabeth: An Intimate Portrait was the product of conversations over decades that he recorded in his diaries. ‘I was the chairman of one of the Duke of Edinburgh’s pet charities, so I spent a lot of time with him, and through him, the Queen.

‘Gyles with a dozen friends, all theatrical dames, on stage at the London Palladium for his birthday in March. They include Joanna Lumley, Sheila Hancock and Patricia Routledge, who received a standing ovation at the age of 94

‘I couldn’t really say much about dogs or horses, which is what she really was interested in, so I broke the rules by initiating conversations with her about things like music and her love of theatre. She was in pantomimes at Windsor Castle during the war. She told me this and slapped her thigh, as they do,’ he says, imitating her before dropping another surprise.

‘The Queen could do amazing impressions. She could do George Formby singing When I’m Cleaning Windows. She also did things like Concorde flying over Windsor Castle: the jets, the wheels coming up.’

He acts it out noisily. ‘She had a playful side.’

Can you ever really be friends with your sovereign, though? ‘Ah, well, as former prime minister James Callaghan told me, “Senior royalty offer you friendliness, not friendship. Never forget the difference.” In the case of Camilla, though, we did meet when we were teenagers.’

This came out before the Coronation, during a recording of Just A Minute.

‘I was given the subject of My Secret Crush. I suddenly heard myself talking about going to a house near my boarding school when I was 16 and meeting this girl of 17, who was wearing jodhpurs, standing in the shrubbery, smoking a Woodbine. She was my secret crush. And I said, “She’s now Duchess of Cornwall.”‘

Camilla was listening. ‘A few weeks later she came to open a flower festival at our local church and said to my wife, “Tell Gyles I may well have been smoking a cigarette but it was certainly not a Woodbine!”‘ Did anything happen between them as teenagers? ‘Oh no. Absurd.’

Some wonder if the British people will accept Camilla as Queen.

‘Well, they do. I don’t think it’s an issue any more. The monarchy’s survived because it’s evolved,’ he insists. ‘When I first went to a royal garden party, divorced people weren’t admitted; now divorced people are hosting the parties. At the Coronation we saw a blended family.’

Not an entirely happy family though? Gyles said on This Morning that public support for Prince Harry and his wife was ‘thinning’ at around the time his autobiography came out.

‘Well, the opinion polls tell us that, but I’m positive about everybody. What I liked about reading Spare is that Harry feels he’s come to terms with all this. How it’ll pan out, I don’t know. All families have issues.’

His own childhood sounds idyllic. ‘My parents did treat me as if I was rather special. It was a shock to find out I couldn’t walk on the water at Fulham Baths,’ jokes Gyles, who was born in 1948 in Germany, where his father was working for the Allied forces. He was raised in London.

‘My mother Alice was a teacher. My father Charles was a lawyer. His father was a lawyer. Talking’s been our trade. They were also both very positive people. I was brought up to be positive,’ he says. ‘But don’t think I don’t know how annoying it can be. I’m very conscious I’m a bit Marmite.

‘If you’re positive, people are positive back, but I know it’s a dark world. The story of my grandson Kitt shows bad things do happen. My best friend from school, the actor Simon Cadell [who starred in Hi-De-Hi!], died in his forties.’

That was in 1996. ‘It was around then that we lost my sister Hester [to lung cancer] and my brother Ben died of asbestosis.’

Gyles sought help from the psychiatrist Professor Anthony Clare and together they came up with seven secrets of happiness. Typically, he turned them into a book – which turned out to be another bestseller.

‘I’m very grateful to have been so blessed,’ says Gyles, whose large gated house is worth about £6 million. ‘You get a house like this by working week in week out. My wife would love me to take a day off, but she’s very kindly coming to Edinburgh.

‘People say to me, “Why are you still working at your age, Gyles?” and I say, “Because I need the money. I’ve discovered that money is the one thing keeping me in touch with my children and grandchildren.”‘

He launches into yet another story, about how he and Michele celebrated their wedding anniversary by buying matching hot water bottles. I laugh, he nods and mutters, ‘Good.’

That one might make the show. Behind the cosy charm lurks a rapier mind. Gyles offers me an umbrella for protection against the rain and says, ‘That could be the end of your interview, couldn’t it?’ And indeed it is.

Gyles is at the Edinburgh Festival Fringe from 2-27 August then on tour from 1 September-17 January. Tickets: gylesbrandreth.net

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