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Phillip Schofield has said he put arrangements in place to die by suicide following his affair scandal.

The former presenter, 62, is set to open up about the emotional impact of the controversy in a three-part Channel 5 series, titled Cast Away, which sees him trying to survive on an island in the Indian Ocean for 10 days.

Schofield admits during the programme that the only reason he’s still alive is because his daughter Molly, 31, talked him down from “the edge”.

He explains his daughter, who was caring for him at the time, had asked him: “‘Can you imagine what it would do to me if you did this on my watch?’

“That was just enough to take a step back from the edge,” he explains. “And I could have been hospitalised… But then I thought, ‘That is going to get out.’ So I just raced to the family home and shut the gates.”

Retelling the story during the first Cast Away episode, the disgraced This Morning star breaks down in tears. “I never in a million years thought I’d do this,” he says of being exiled to an island for 10 days for television.

He adds: “It’s nice to discover new things about yourself… for you personally, when you don’t look online and people tell you what they think you’re like.”

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Of his decision to return to public life to film the programme, the presenter explains: “I locked myself away from the outside world. But now I want to see if the ultimate isolation can finally set me free.”

Schofield left ITV last May after he admitted he had lied about having a “consensual on-off relationship” with a younger man, which took place while Schofield was still married to his wife Stephanie Lowe.

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The presenter said he arranged for the teenager to get work experience with ITV when he was around 19. He denied having any form of sexual contact with him until he was around 20 years old, after the man had been working on the show for a few months, and insisted the relationship was “consensual and fully legal”.

After the scandal emerged, Schofield apologised for lying to the media, his friends and his colleagues about the affair and immediately left ITV.

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Viewers have been left incensed at the news of the former presenter’s TV comeback and have called the move a “disgrace”.

One person said the presenter was “desperate for attention” while dozens joked about the concept of the show, which sees Schofield stranded alone, as one commented” “Absolutely nobody wants to work with him so he’s doing a show that has no cast or crew.”

Schofield addresses the hostility towards him during the first Cast Away episode, saying: “I think there’d be an awful lot of people [who] hope that I never come back. Goodbye. Thank you. ‘What happened? He got washed out to sea. Well, there we go.’”

Cast Away airs over three nights beginning 30 September.

If you are experiencing feelings of distress, or are struggling to cope, you can speak to the Samaritans, in confidence, on 116 123 (UK and ROI), email jo@samaritans.org, or visit the Samaritans website to find details of your nearest branch.

If you are based in the USA, and you or someone you know needs mental health assistance right now, call the National Suicide Prevention Helpline on 1-800-273-TALK (8255). This is a free, confidential crisis hotline that is available to everyone 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

If you are in another country, you can go to www.befrienders.org to find a helpline near you.

The character first arrived in Albert Square in 2004 as she was looking for her estranged husband Den Watts.

After she was persuaded to give their marriage another go, she then discovered he had an adopted daughter, Sharon (Letitia Dean) along with two other children, Dennis Rickman (Nigel Harman) and Vicki Fowler (Scarlett Alice Johnson).

Chrissie soon discovers that Den has been having an affair with the local ex-policewoman, Kate Morton (Jill Halfpenny). Chrissie initially worked together with Kate in the salon, before she got her revenge by hacking off her hair in revenge.

Chrissie and Den reconciled as she told him that she would kill him if he ever cheated on her again. Together, they decided to defraud Sam Mitchell (Kim Metcalfe) and her family from everything, including their ownership the Queen Vic. However, she soon felt left out by Den after he begins another affair with Zoe Slater (Michelle Ryan), when he tries to get her pregnant after she lied to Dennis.

Dennis discovered the affair. Chrissie then persuaded Zoe to abort the baby. Together with Sam Mitchell, they concoct a plan to get their own revenge on Den and either Chrissie or Sam will get hold of the pub.

They confront him on the night of his 37th wedding anniversary with Angie. Den is unmoved and confesses all of his wrongdoings, including Chrissie’s part in defrauding the Mitchell’s. However, Sharon was waiting in the shadows and she denounces Den before leaving Watford.

Chrissie taunted Den who then attacked her. In turn, Zoe then hits Den with a doorstop which belonged to Den’s sworn enemy Pauline Fowler (Wendy Richard). Sam and Zoe panic, but a smug Chrissie taunted him when they were left alone. He violently grabbed her leg before she delivered the fatal blow to his head with the heavy object, unaware that Sam was secretly watching her.

Zoe was left unaware of the true extent of what happened that night and Chrissie allowed her to think that she killed Den. The trio hid the body in the Vic, before Sam confronted Chrissie about what she truly saw. Sam demanded that the ownership of the pub reverted back to the Mitchell family.

Sam tells Zoe the truth about the murder and Zoe leaves Walford. but she tells Kat (Jessie Wallace) about the killing. Sam gets drunk on Sharon and Dennis’ wedding day, digs up den’s body in the hope that Chrissie will be sent down. But Chrissie feigned grief as she comforted Sharon over her dad’s death. Sam told the police about the murder, but when Den’s blood was found under Sam’s sink, complete with her changing story, she got the blame for his murder. Chrissie also convinces Kat to get Stacey (Lacey Turner) to give a false alibi to the police that Zoe and Chrissie were with Kat her that night.

Sam’s mother Peggy (Barbara Windsor) returned to Walford and slapped Chrissie who fell into Den’s grave at the funeral. The matriarch also accused her of murder by framing her daughter. Stacey soon learned the truth and she blackmailed Chrissie for money. In return, she then forms a relationship with Jake Moon (Joel Beckett) and she attempts to sell the Queen Vic to Jake’s gangland boss Johnny Allen (Billy Murray).

After making a series of mistakes, she planned to free the country with Jake. Before then, they argued at Johnny’s nightclub, where Chrissie confessed that she killed Den with the doorstop. Johnny told Phil and Grant about the tape but Chrissie and Jake were already on their way out of the country. However, they were almost stopped by Patrick Trueman (Rudolph Walker) and Billy (Perry Fenwick) informed the police. At the airport, she was confronted by Sharon and was arrested by police after an exchange of words and a punch to the face.

Chrissie only co-operated with the force in exchange for a meeting with Sharon, as she tried to get her to understand why she killed Den. In the meantime, Sam was released on bail but fled to Brazil with the help of Phil. Jake visited her in prison and proposes to her. However, she discovered that he lost the £25,000 that was to be her bail money and she called him an ‘idiot’ before storming out. She then decided to get revenge on Sharon for sending her to prison. She attempted to force her to testify in court about what Den was like as Chrissie thought that Sharon would crumble. But still looking at Sharon like a step-daughter she called off her plan, fired her solicitor and plead guilty to the murder. She was then sentenced to life imprisonment.

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The celebrated actor Maggie Smith, who won two Oscars and eight Baftas, has died aged 89. The star of stage and screen, known for her prominent roles in Harry Potter and Downton Abbey, as well as her performance in The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, died in hospital on Friday morning, her sons Chris Larkin and Toby Stephens said.

Stephens and Larkin said in a statement: “It is with great sadness we have to announce the death of Dame Maggie Smith. She passed away peacefully in hospital early this morning.

“An intensely private person, she was with friends and family at the end. She leaves two sons and five loving grandchildren who are devastated by the loss of their extraordinary mother and grandmother.”

In a stellar career spanning 60 years, Smith gave life to a host of memorable characters, from Muriel Spark’s passionate Edinburgh girls’ school teacher Jean Brodie, to Professor Minerva McGonagall in the Harry Potter series and Violet Crawley in the ITV drama Downton Abbey.

Her other film hits include the Sister Act franchise and Steven Spielberg’s Hook.

Over her career, Smith worked with theatrical greats including Sir Laurence Olivier, Sir John Gielgud, Alan Bennett and Dame Judi Dench, while maintaining a prolific film and television presence from the 1960s onwards.

Tributes have poured in since her death was announced. The King and Queen said: “As the curtain comes down on a national treasure, we join all those around the world in remembering with the fondest admiration and affection her many great performances, and her warmth and wit that shone through both off and on the stage.’’

Sir Keir Starmer called her a “true national treasure”; theatre producer Sir Cameron Mackintosh said she was the “master of the zinger”, while the National Theatre’s Rufus Norris said her “sublime craft and sharp wit were simply legendary”.

The actor was born Margaret Natalie Smith on 28 December 1934 in Ilford, Essex, the youngest child of Nathaniel Smith, a pathologist from Newcastle upon Tyne, and Margaret Hutton, a Glaswegian secretary, who had fallen in love after meeting on a train to London.

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The family relocated to Oxford when their daughter was four. She soon won a scholarship to Oxford High School and, despite a frustrating failure to win parts in school plays – because she was considered “too common”, Smith later alleged – quickly resolved to become an actress, just as her elder twin brothers Alistair and Ian had decided equally emphatically to dedicate themselves to careers in architecture.

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In 1952, when she was 17, she took a job as an assistant stage manager at the Oxford Playhouse, which she later complained had amounted to little more than “making endless cups of tea and playing maids” but which had also seen her make her debut as Viola in Twelfth Night before appearing in such plays as Cinderella, Rookery Nook, Housemaster, W Somerset Maugham’s Cakes and Ale and The Letter and Nikolai Gogol’s The Government Inspector.

In 1956, she went to New York City to make her Broadway debut playing several parts in the revue New Faces of ’56 at the Ethel Barrymore Theatre before returning to London the following year to star in the musical comedy Share My Lettuce.

Here she played opposite Kenneth Williams, who would remain a lifelong friend with whom she would appear again, to award-winning effect, in the Peter Shaffer two-parter The Private Ear and the Public Eye at The Globe in 1962.

“She is so singular, a unique actress,” Williams would later say of his co-star, praising her hard work in rehearsals and remembering with particular relish a sketch in which she had played a hostess encouraging her guests to join in a round of party games while artfully swinging a string of beads around her neck and midriff and back again without losing them, a trick only mastered through hours of practice.

Her real stage breakthrough arrived that same year when she was invited by Lord Olivier to join his company at the National Theatre, Sir Laurence having been impressed after seeing her in William Congreve’s The Double-Dealer at The Old Vic, where she had also completed a trio of Shakespeare plays.

She would stay at the National for eight years, enjoying a remarkable run from 1963 to 1965 in particular when she starred in George Farquhar’s The Recruiting Officer, played Desdemona in Othello and appeared in Henrik Ibsen’s Master Builder, Noel Coward’s Hay Fever and Much Ado About Nothing.

However, her relationship with Sir Laurence was often tense and in danger of boiling over into outright rivalry. She later revealed that he had once slapped her in a rehearsal for Othello and criticised her diction, to which she pointedly replied in perfectly crisp vowels, having waited until he was in makeup to play the Moor: “How now, brown cow?”

Nevertheless, the 1965 film version, which gave screen debuts to future knights Michael Gambon and Derek Jacobi, secured Oscar nominations for both of its stars.

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Prior to that, Smith had made her uncredited movie debut in Child in the House (1956) but was Bafta-nominated for her first screen role proper, Nowhere to Go (1958), an atypical Ealing crime drama.

Her other screen appearances in the 1960s included roles in the comedy Go to Blazes and Jack Clayton’s adaptation of Penelope Mortimer’s The Pumpkin-Eater (both 1962), the Terence Rattigan-penned The VIPs (1963), Jack Cardiff’s Sean O’Casey biopic Young Cassidy and the American capers The Honey Pot (1967) and Hot Millions (1968), the former directed by Joseph L Mankiewicz and starring Rex Harrison.

She was part of the impressive ensemble cast of Richard Attenborough’s satirical musical O What a Lovely War! in 1969, the same year in which she played the title role in Ronald Neame’s film of The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie, a part that would define her in the public imagination forever afterwards.

Smith was perfectly cast as Spark’s imperious, influential teacher, whose pupils idolise her, not always wisely, and may have taken inspiration from her own mother, at least in accent. She was rewarded with the Academy Award for Best Actress for her performance and would appear in another Spark adaptation, Memento Mori, in 1992.

Smith married during this period, wedding fellow actor Robert Stephens on 29 June 1967, with whom she would go on to have two sons: Chris Larkin (born 1967) and Toby Stephens (1969). They too would grow up to join the family business.

After starring in Farquhar’s The Beaux’ Stratagem and the great Swedish director Ingmar Bergman’s London production of Ibsen’s Hedda Gabbler in 1970, she picked up another Academy Award nomination for her work in the veteran George Cukor’s Travels with My Aunt (1972) and appeared in Alan J Pakula’s Love and Pain and the Whole Damn Thing (1973).

Smith subsequently played Peter Pan at the London Coliseum before returning to Broadway in 1975 to play opposite her husband in Coward’s Private Lives, directed by Sir John Gielgud. The stormy relationship between the central characters all too closely echoed that between Smith and Stephens and they would separate that same year.

She was quickly remarried to the playwright Beverley Cross on 23 June 1975. The pair moved to Canada, collaborating on a string of productions at Ontario’s Stratford Shakespeare Festival (1976-80) and remained together until his death in 1998.

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Her other films of the 1970s included two by Neil Simon, the ensemble whodunit spoof Murder By Death (1976) and California Suite (1978), for which she won her second and final Oscar, this time named Best Supporting Actress. She also appeared in the Agatha Christie adaptation Death on the Nile (1978) and returned for a follow-up four years later, Evil Under the Sun (1982), both of which starred Peter Ustinov as Hercule Poirot.

In between, she made Quartet (1981), inspired by Jean Rhys’s novel of the same name, and played Thetis in Clash of the Titans (1981), remembered for Ray Harryhausen’s celebrated stop-motion effects.

The mid-1980s brought Smith’s first screen collaborations with her friends Alan Bennett and Dame Judi Dench: she appeared in A Private Function (1984) scripted by the former and starred with the latter in the Merchant Ivory production of EM Forster’s A Room with a View (1985), securing a fifth Oscar nomination for her turn as Charlotte Bartlett.

She would later triumph in a celebrated 1988 instalment of Bennett’s television monologues Talking Heads (“A Bed Among the Lentils”) and on both stage and screen as Miss Shepherd in his The Lady in the Van . She would appear with Dench in Tea with Mussolini (1999), David Hare’s play The Breath of Life (2002), Ladies in Lavender (2004) and The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel (2012) and its 2015 sequel.

The early 1990s saw Smith make a number of memorable appearances in hit American films, from playing the older Wendy Darling in Steven Spielberg’s Hook (1991) to her role as a disapproving Mother Superior opposite Whoopi Goldberg’s undercover lounge singer in Sister Act (1992).

Further literary adaptations followed, including roles in The Secret Garden (1993), Richard Loncraine’s Second World War-set Richard III (1995) opposite Ian McKellen and films of Henry James’s Washington Square (1997) and Elizabeth Bowen’s The Last September (1999), as well as altogether camper fare such as The First Wives Club (1996) supporting Diane Keaton, Bette Midler and Goldie Hawn.

Television provided an additional showcase for her talents in her later years and she appeared in a famed American broadcast of Tennessee Williams’s Suddenly, Last Summer (1993) a BBC dramatisation of Charles Dickens’s David Copperfield (1999) and the TV films My House in Umbria (2003) and Capturing Mary (2007).

The turn of the new millennium saw Smith step into another role with which she would be closely associated thereafter and which would introduce her to a younger generation of filmgoers.

She first donned a witches’ hat to play Minerva McGonagall, the strict but kindly transfiguration instructor and deputy headmistress of Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry, in Chris Columbus’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone in 2001 and would reprise the role in six more films in that blockbuster franchise, based on JK Rowling’s best-selling novels.

She would later recount meetings with young fans, who would inquire suspiciously whether she had really turned into a cat.

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That same year, she was in scene-stealing form in Robert Altman’s English country house drama Gosford Park, picking up her final Academy Award nod and finding another important collaborator in Julian Fellowes, who would soon write her another plum part as the vinegary Lady Violet Crawley, Dowager Countess of Grantham, in the popular television series Downton Abbey (2010-15).

Asked by chat show host Graham Norton whether she was glad the series was coming to an end in 2015, Smith answered, without a moment’s hesitation: “Oh yeah! No, I really am. Honestly, by the time we finished she must have been 110 so I couldn’t go on and on!”

Asked whether she had ever actually seen an episode of Downton, she replied, rather more guiltily: “I’ve got the box set…”

A giant of theatre and a deft character player on film, extremely committed and rarely out of work, Smith was nevertheless something of a perennial outsider, despite the adulation she received throughout her career, having acquired a reputation as rather spiky and acid-tongued, disinclined to suffer fools gladly.

On whether she had ever felt inclined to try to correct this perception, she told an audience at London’s Tricycle Theatre in March 2017: “It’s gone too far now to take back. If I suddenly came on like Pollyanna, it wouldn’t work – it would frighten people more if I were nice. They’d be paralysed with fear. And wonder what I was up to. But perhaps I should try it… ‘Hello! What fun! We’re going to be here all day! And then filming all night too! Goodie! And it’s so lovely and cold!’”