if Meghan thinks she’s won the battle with me, she’s in for a big shock
Why he stormed off TV ++ How he’s worth more than the world’s top footballer ++ His new career plans (watch out Team Sussex). In a riotous interview, PIERS MORGAN says...
guests cry on his Life Stories (ITV) show. During the upcoming interview with Sir Keir Starmer, the Labour leader breaks down multiple times, and not just about the recent election results.
‘I never set out to make people cry. And it’s not about making people cry, it is about showing their human side.
‘The Keir Starmer show is very powerful television.’ Very powerful. Just like Meghan. ‘Yes. What we are dealing with is a very manipulative actress who knows exactly the hot button issues to press to create, in her eyes, a protective shield around anything she says.’
Yet he doesn’t mind if she perhaps feels a personal triumph at his inglorious gMB exit.
‘Well I am sure she had a wonderful, joyous series of venti latte celebrations or crystal bashing, whatever they do over there, when she heard. I’m sure she did and that’s fine. I’ve no problem with that.
‘She thinks she’s beaten me? She might be in for a surprise, because I suspect I’ll be back soon.
‘And my views certainly haven’t changed. If Meghan thinks she has cancelled me or won the battle, she is in for a big shock. I’ve never been more popular.’
Piers is not saying what he will do next, only that it ‘will take everyone by surprise, it is not what you expect’.
I suspect this means he is not going to do the obvious and join Andrew Neil’s new television station gB News, but who knows?
He wants to take stock, get fit, enjoy his life without its crushing breakfast television schedules and not rush into anything.
At the moment, he is still on gardening leave, with ITV paying his contract until the end of the year. ‘They are paying me not to get out of bed,’ is how he puts it.
So apart from that incident Piers, how has your lockdown been? Mixed, is the honest answer.
oNe might have hoped that ITV would have done more to protect the star who made gMB a must-watch during the pandemic’s darkest days, trouncing their BBC arch rivals in the process. ‘We were a show on fire, we were really blazing in that last week,’ he says.
Instead he was thrown on the woke bonfire without a second thought. ‘We had broken our ratings record twice in the previous week. You know, I wasn’t expecting a carriage clock for beating the BBC, but I didn’t expect it to be my last day either.’ But he is philosophical, not angry.
‘It fundamentally came down to a lot of pressure being applied internally.
‘This is going on everywhere around the world, you know? The young, self-righteous, angry woke brigade affect everything.’
He even understands why cohost Susanna was initially frosty about his departure. The day after he left, she presented the show in a kind of icy fury. ‘I was taken aback when I watched it,’ he says. ‘I did think it was a bit cold, but I think it was a mixture of shock.
‘You have to understand it was a very dramatic, sudden divorce. even if initially my genuine ex-wife was more supportive than Susanna! I think she probably hadn’t slept. I think she was very upset, I think she was angry a bit as well. And I think that she was concerned about her own position.’ Since then, they have talked and made up. ‘We’re all good. She was very apologetic. She said she just felt like she was in quite a state of flux.
‘I said to her, Susanna, I don’t want to be patronising but I think you’re a much better broadcaster now than you were when we first
started working together.’ She must have been thrilled! ‘Yes, I said you are so much more opinionated now than you were. I miss her.’
Lockdown has had its difficult moments for Piers. For a start, he is missing his swimming pools, plural. ‘I’ve got one in my home in LA and one in my home in Sussex and I haven’t been able to swim in either of them. First world problems, I know.’
He has spent the last year in his London home with wife Celia, their daughter Elise, nine, the live-in nanny and one of his three sons from his first marriage.
He works out on his Peloton bike, he makes his special recipe ‘spaghetti Morganaise’ every Sunday night, he takes long walks in which he has had to get used to the appreciation of members of the public who stop him to voice their support.
‘It is hard for me, having to endure this sustained period of popularity. Yes, it is quite discombobulating. I’m more used to people giving me what for,’ he jokes.
Celia teases her newly at-home husband by posting photographs of him doing the vacuuming online. ‘I want it all done by the time I get back from work,’ she captioned one. Someone sent her a loo roll called Poop On Piers, with photographs of her husband on every sheet. ‘A proud moment for any wife,’ she noted. ‘Celia said that if our marriage can survive lockdown and being stuck with me, it can survive anything,’ he says.
His worst time came when his parents — who live in Sussex — both caught Covid very badly last October. ‘It was very tough. I couldn’t go near them.
‘My mother told me on the phone she thought she was dying. But they came through it, thank God.’ He is surprisingly religious.
‘I prayed to God and I prayed to my grandmother. I don’t go to church but I am not a lapsed Catholic, I still believe. And I find my faith a comfort.’
He does not find it a comfort, however, that GMB has lost a huge number of viewers since he left.
‘We all worked so hard to make that show a success,’ he says, rather sadly.
And on that note, we have to part. Piers kindly offers to pay for our coffees, but I won’t hear of it. Leave it to me, Mr Marmite, my sensitivo friend, I say.
Let old Roly-Poly get the bill. n Piers Morgan’s 100 Life stories, a look back at some of his favourite moments, will be on iTV tomorrow at 9pm. His interview with sir Keir starmer will air on iTV on Tuesday at 9.30pm.