10 The Times Magazine

problem with London’s transport

system makes me late for my

interview with Piers Morgan.

I message apologies from the

platform at Earls Court station.

I’ve had Morgan’s phone number

since I first met him in 2008, when

I’d flown to Los Angeles to

interview him. He was 42 – he’s

now 57 – and in the America’s

Got Talent stage of his career, the midpoint

between him getting fired in 2004 from the

editorship of the Daily Mirror, after running

fake pictures of British soldiers torturing Iraqi

civilians in Abu Ghraib, and his evolving into

the UK’s controversialist broadcaster, the loud-

mouthed tormentor-in-chief of the “woke”.

“I’m sorry! I’m late!” I text. He’s delighted.

“Ha ha! Excellent. I expect to read this in your

piece because I will be EARLY!” he replies.

I start whatsapping him questions while

I wait for the Parsons Green connection (we’re

to meet at a photographic studio there, close

to the Kensington home Morgan shares with

his second wife, the writer Celia Walden, and

their ten-year-old daughter, Elise).

Are you excited about Uncensored, I ask,

referring to the new evening opinion show

he’ll be hosting on TalkTV when the channel

is launched this month by News UK, the

parent company of The Times.

“Extremely... But not as excited as the

world is. They miss me... even if they find me

annoying. A bit like you.”

By the time I arrive at the studio – barely

five minutes late – he’s scuttled off to a nearby

Gail’s bakery for breakfast. He returns with a

cinnamon whirl – he’d forgotten how good

they are – says he’d hoped I’d be much, much

later so he might tease me more thoroughly,

wonders if I’d have been late at all for, say,

Bill Clinton...

This is the fifth time I’ve interviewed

Morgan. Each stands as a marker on the ups

and dips in Morgan’s rollercoaster career. The

second time was two years later, in New York

in 2010, before he started as Larry King’s

replacement on CNN’s primetime evening

show, which was cancelled in 2014 with poor

ratings, then again in 2017, at 5.30am in the

ITV studios, when he’d started to bed into

Good Morning Britain, begun to cause ructions,

make enemies and establish himself as a

pantomime villain, agent provocateur enemy

of the righteous on Twitter.

I talked to him in May 2020, in the midst

of the first lockdown, when he’d suddenly

and most unexpectedly found favour among

those who’d previously loathed him and all

he stood for – Labour activists Owen Jones

and Ash Sarkar and former editor of The

Guardian Alan Rusbridger among them

• because he’d started taking Boris Johnson’s
  government to task on the many ways it

failed in the early stages of the pandemic.

“It was funny,” he’ll tell me, “seeing the

people who normally hate me agree with me.

It hurt them.”

Less than a year later, in March 2021,

Morgan walked off the GMB set following a

spat with weatherman Alex Beresford (whom

Morgan routinely refers to as “the deputy

stand-in weather guy”) over the credibility of

the Duchess of Sussex’s claims in the infamous

interview with Oprah Winfrey that racist

treatment by the royal family led to her

contemplating suicide. “I’m sorry, I don’t

believe a word she said, Meghan Markle.

I wouldn’t believe it if she read me a weather

report,” Morgan announced, to an all-time-

high GMB viewership of 1.9 million. Beresford

suggested his response was in itself racist.

“Apparently,” Morgan tells me now, “he was

heard out the back rehearsing his lines, clearly

wanted to have his little YouTube moment of

fame, and that’s fine. I know he was planning

a Hollywood career. I’m not quite sure how it’s

going; I’ve not heard any updates.”

At the time, Morgan left the set in “a bit of

a flounce. I’m not a natural flouncer... I don’t

think the walkout was a good thing. I just was

annoyed, and thought the consequences of me

not walking out, staying there, were probably

worse than the consequences of being ridiculed

for walking out.” What would you have done

had you stayed? Hit someone? “I’m not entirely

sure. It would have been a bit of a mess, yes.”

ITV asked Morgan to apologise (the

duchess personally contacted Carolyn McCall,

chief executive of the channel, to request the

apology). Morgan refused; his job with Good

Morning Britain ended.

A year after that, here we are, meeting

weeks before the launch of TalkTV’s

nightly Piers Morgan Uncensored show. The

“uncensored” bit, he says, is intended to “give

everyone a good laugh who thinks I’m not

remotely censored. But, actually, in a way,

I was. My departure from Good Morning

Britain was a form of censorship.”

Does he think GMB – whose viewing

figures have fallen from that 1.9 million high

to around 450,000 – regrets it?

“You’d have to ask them. I’ve seen what’s

happened to the viewing figures. I’d regret it if

I were them.”

Does he take pleasure in the figures?

“The opposite. I think about all those early

starts, all that energy, all that commitment,

trying to turn it into the No 1 rated show on

morning TV, achieving it in that last week...

I didn’t expect a carriage clock, but I didn’t

expect to have to immediately leave

the building.”

Would he be there now, if Meghangate

hadn’t happened?

“Probably.”

Instead, he’s fronting the flagship show of

A

With his daughter, Elise, talking

to the press after leaving Good

Morning Britain in 2021 (top)

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