The Times Magazine 11a new channel, which must be intimidating,
even for him?
“There’ll be a lot of talented people on
the channel,” he says, with uncharacteristic
modesty. I raise an eyebrow.
“I’m probably the most high-profile,”
he concedes.
The best paid? Rumours of Morgan’s fee
are astronomical. Not quite Premier League
footballer astronomical, but not far off.
“I don’t know.”
Really? You’re grinning.
“I haven’t seen the bank balances of the
others. But I did say to Simon Cowell, ‘I’ll get
dinner next time around.’ That annoyed him.”
What will Uncensored involve? Not
breaking news, but Morgan’s “take”, him
getting het up and vocal over all the kinds
of issues he got het up and vocal about on
GMB – from Greggs’ vegan sausage rolls
and Daniel Craig’s baby papoose to gender
self-identification and the demolition of
problematic statues – night after night, with
a revolving cast of guest panellists. I wonder
about the absence of a regular co-host.
So much of Morgan’s success on GMB is
associated with the chemistry he shared with
fellow anchor Susanna Reid, a deft, talented
broadcaster whose stern forbearance and
pointed eye rolling balanced Morgan’s rants
exquisitely, whose very presence was the
reason Ofcom found in favour of GMB, when
record complaints were registered over the
Meghan broadcast. It was because Reid
challenged Morgan robustly on that day- as she always had – that Ofcom found no
breach of its code.
“I won’t have a co-host. It’s going to be my
show – and remember, it’s a much shorter
show, only 40-odd minutes of airtime a night
[as opposed to GMB’s three hours]. But I
intend to have a lot of pundits who will go toe
to toe with me. I don’t want to have shouting
matches, but I want to have good arguments.
Smart, opinionated guests. The basic rules are:
I don’t want any stupid people. There’s enough
stupid debate going on. Rather than you have
to have a Covid test [to get on set], you’ll need
an IQ test. Ha ha! No. But metaphorically.
I will tolerate all opinions.”
All?
“Point is, I don’t mind people disagreeing
with me. Actually, I revel in it. That’s my
irritation with the ‘woke brigade’, for want
of a better phrase. They pretend to be liberal
and yet they’re the very antithesis of
liberalism. They’ve become like the very
fascists they profess to hate: they’re all
about control, cancellation, shaming,
vilification, no-platforming. And they can
try to park me to the right, but everyone who
knows me knows I’m not right-wing. I’m just
a pissed-off liberal.”
Ground zero on public disapproval of
Piers Morgan – ground zero on a tendency to
assume he represents right-wing politics – is
his former friendship with Donald Trump.
Morgan met Trump when Trump was running
the American version of The Apprentice –
Morgan entered, and won, the 2008 celebrity
version of the show. He sustained a friendship
with the president for more than a decade.
The first time I met Morgan, he took me to
a fundraising golf club gala run by Trump
somewhere in the Hollywood Hills; at
Christmas 2015, during the annual boozy bash
Morgan throws every year in his local pub
(until Covid interrupted it), he confidently said
Trump would win the forthcoming American
election, at a time when the idea seemed
ludicrous. That Morgan not only entertained,
but boasted about, this friendship, through the
course of Trump’s most questionable, painful,
unpleasant political excesses, that he often
seemed more amused than horrified by
Trump’s behaviour, appalled a lot of people.
He’s explained his relationship with Trump
to me by pointing out we all have friends and
relatives whom we like and indulge despite
them saying outrageous things (which, I had
to concede, is the case in terms of my
relationship with him). But I think he was
at least as concerned with maintaining a
connection with the most powerful man in the
western world, and also contrarian enough to
enjoy how many people it upset and confused.
Even now, he insists Trump’s crass, ugly,
unseemly proclamations and tweets were
worse than his bite, worse than anything he
actually did, that Obama “deported three
million [immigrants] in eight years. He was
called ‘deporter in chief’ in Mexico... His
deportation record was far higher than
Trump’s, but Obama looked and sounded
like what liberals wanted in a president.”
His friendship with Trump juddered to a
halt in 2020, when Trump’s mishandling of
first the killing of George Floyd, then Covid,
proved too much for Morgan. He described
Trump’s Covid policies as “stupid, reckless
and dangerous” in a newspaper column,
after which Trump unfollowed him on
Twitter. I ask how things stand between
the two men now.
“I got a nice text from Ivanka when I got
the job. I said, ‘Oh, send my best to all the
family.’ She said, ‘Actually, I’m with Dad
and Jared now.’ I said, ‘Well, tell your dad’- I thought I’ll be careful about how I phrase
this – ‘tell your dad I almost miss him.’
She laughed.”
I tell him that, of all the things people
say about him, the assumption he’s racist
bothers me the most. That, again, is born
of his friendship with Trump; racism was
presumed to be the underlying motivation
in Morgan’s ridiculing Meghan Markle’s
interview with Oprah, and when he
‘I’VE SEEN WHAT HAPPENED
TO THE VIEWING FIGURES
AT GMB. I’D REGRET MY
LEAVING IF I WERE THEM’
With his wife, Celia Walden