14 The Times Magazine
what he’s doing is terrible. The fact he keeps
doing it, and he’s got this book coming out,
which is presumably going to spray-gun the
royals all over again, I think it’s disgusting.”
Right, I say, but all of that could seem petty
when compared with, say, the alleged crimes
of Prince Andrew. Isn’t focusing on Meghan
and Harry a distraction?
“What Andrew did was far worse. There’s
not a scale where you say Meghan and
Harry are worse than him... The fact that
the Queen’s second son has had to pay
millions of dollars in a settlement to stop
himself being accountable in a court of
law against a woman claiming that he had
under-age sex with her in America is
disgusting and shameful. He kept saying he
was going to fight it, fight it, fight it, clear his
name. In the end he just gave her a cheque to
go away. It’s the worst scandal we’ve had to
deal with, but even more reason why Meghan
and Harry should stop their self-obsessed
antics and give the Queen a break.”
What of his other famous bêtes noires? I
ask him how he feels about Boris Johnson and
he says, “Partygate laid bare Boris at his worst,
which is a bloke who just wants to be popular,
wants everyone to have a good time, doesn’t
want to have any personal accountability for
anything, either privately or professionally,
couldn’t really see what the problem was...”
I ask how he feels about Priti Patel and he
says, “I don’t think she’s covered herself in
glory, to put it mildly... All the ministers,
whether it’s Hancock, Priti Patel, Sunak,
Boris... Sunak I think is the most impressive
operator of all of them – I think he’s on a
different intellectual level, to be honest.
Although being Chancellor in a pandemic
is about as tough a test as it gets, he’s now
coming under a lot of fire. It’ll be interesting
to see how he copes. I do think that there’s a
general paucity in the cabinet of very smart
people.” He likes Sir Keir Starmer, whom
he interviewed last year for his Life Stories
programme on ITV. “He has a great chance of
winning the next election, but he’s got to resist
the woke element of his party driving him
down unelectable rabbit holes.”
Like offering divisive definitions on what it
means to be a woman (as Starmer did in a
recent Times interview)?
“Utterly ridiculous. That moment can be
replayed by the Tories again and again in
an election campaign. It will be incredibly
damaging. If women think that there’s a party
that can’t even define what a woman is,
because it’s too scared of upsetting the trans
lobby, they’re not going to vote for them.”
On the trans debate, I say, I’d been
interested to see that the fluctuating line on
political correctness has lately placed him on
the same side as a former enemy: the author
JK Rowling. Once, Rowling was a darling of
left-leaning, Morgan-loathing liberals; now,
she’s routinely aligned by the same former fan
base with fascists, on account of her refusal to
deny the realities of biological sex. Are the
two of you enjoying a rapprochement on
account of shared ideology?
“JK Rowling, who hates my guts?”
Still? “Dunno. You’d have to ask her.
What’s happened to her is disgusting. I’m
prepared to park the fact she went on Twitter
after I got told to f*** off on Bill Maher [in
2017, on Real Time with Bill Maher, comedian
Jim Jefferies told Morgan to f*** off after he
claimed Trump had not instigated a Muslim
travel ban] and said how delicious it was to
watch me being told to f*** off on live TV. I’m
prepared to park that to one side, that little
hiccup in our friendship, and support her, not
because I necessarily agree with everything
she says about this issue, but because I think
she’s entitled to her opinion, and because
I think it comes from a good place, wanting
to support women’s rights to fairness and
equality, and if you don’t support JK Rowling’s
desire for fairness and equality, you’re the
problem, not her.”
I ask him about the last time he cried,
and he says: “At my grandmother’s funeral...
I’m not really a crier. I think when you run
a daily newspaper for ten years, you’re
exposed constantly to horrendous things.
I can remember crying over Dunblane [the
1996 primary school massacre, which helped
focus Morgan’s long-running support of gun
control] and Sandy Hook [the 2012 high
school shooting in the US]. I definitely shed
a tear over Sandy Hook...
“Shane Warne. Shane Warne was a good
friend of mine, and I actually deliberately
didn’t do any television interviews [in the days
after Warne’s sudden death last month of a
heart attack] because I thought I might cry.
That’s the honest truth. I’d been texting him
a few hours before.”
Morgan tells me he’s going to use one
of Warne’s favourite lines on Uncensored, in
tribute. “He used to sometimes say, ‘You’ve got
to say get stuffed to the fun police.’ I thought
that was such a brilliant line. I wouldn’t mind
that on my tombstone.”
I ask Morgan if he’s worried his new show- which, ambitiously, will be broadcast in the
UK, Australia and the US – might fail. He says
absolutely not, but then, the prospect of failure
genuinely never really occurs to him.
“I’ve certainly had some big apparent
failures in my career – but I don’t really see
them as failure. When I left the Mirror, people
would say, ‘Oh, you got disgraced,’ but I didn’t
think so. I think the story we published was
true. I had the head of the British Army tell
me a few years ago I was right to publish it,
which is good enough for me. I’d done nearly
ten years editing a daily newspaper and I still
wasn’t even 40! I went to CNN and replaced
Larry King and did 1,200 shows on primetime
global television with millions of eyeballs
every night, interviewed everyone I could
possibly want to interview, left after four years
and people say, ‘You failed.’ But I’m the only
British person who’s ever done that – how do
you categorise that as failure? I look at my
level of failure and I’m quite relaxed about it.”
I find myself marvelling at the extent of
Morgan’s self-belief, how his shamelessness
also equates to a shame-free-ness, how
liberated he is by it, and how pleasant that
sort of thing is to be around. He’s generous
with it. He’d honestly rather everyone else felt
like this too and can’t begin to understand
why most people persist with tedious things
like floundering self-esteem, self-doubt.
In demonstration, I ask him if he wants to
be the most famous anchorman in the world,
and he says, “Are you suggesting I’m not?
I can’t think of a more famous one.” I ask him
what his ultimate game plan is, and he says,
“World domination.”
I realise I only have time for one final
question, so I use it well.
Have you had Botox?
“No, I have not had Botox! But you know
what’s interesting? I have such a smooth
forehead.” He strokes it in illustration. “I had
my head scan done by an LA plastic surgeon
for a documentary. Apparently my skin quality
is in the top 14 per cent of men in California,
and I’m thinking of all the shit they put on
themselves in California, and I was in the top
14 per cent!”
Good genes?
“Just a natural beauty.”
I think we’ll leave it there. n‘PARTYGATE LAID BARE
BORIS AT HIS WORST,
A BLOKE WHO JUST
WANTS TO BE POPULAR’
Piers Morgan Uncensored starts
on April 25 on TalkTV, 8pm-9pm,
Monday to Friday, available on
Sky, Virgin Media, Freeview and
Freesat. It can be streamed via
Amazon Fire TV, Apple TV,
Samsung TV Plus and YouTube,
and via the website Talk.TV