No, I won’t do Strictly with Giovanni. That stick insect couldn’t lift a lump like me
TUESDAY, DECEMBER 1 Just when I thought 2020 couldn’t possibly get any worse, terrible news reaches me that I’ve been sent to permanent social Siberia by Kirstie Allsopp. We fell out back in March after she was caught flouting coronavirus lockdown rules by decamping her family to Devon when her husband got the virus, angering locals who wanted second-home townies to stay away to avoid bringing the disease with them.
Ms Allsopp played the woe-is-me victim over the furore, which was particularly unedifying given how many real victims the pandemic has sadly created. When I tweeted this point, she exploded with indignant, foulmouthed fury, calling me a ‘total B*****D!’ and ‘scum’ and blocking me on Twitter.
Now it appears my erasure from her life is not just limited to social media. Asked about me by the Daily Mail’s Weekend magazine, Ms Allsopp summoned the full range of her very real delusions of regal grandeur to announce: ‘I’ll never say anything about him again. I won’t acknowledge him.’
The interviewer Jenny Johnston observed: ‘I suspect she’s made a little felt Piers effigy which she stabs with a needle at night.’ Obviously, I’m distraught at this development.
In fact, ironically, I haven’t been so upset since I tested negative for Covid-19.
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 2 Scotch eggs are the food of the moment, and happen to be one of my favourite ‘ substantial meals’, to give them their new formal title. Unfortunately, that didn’t stop alarm bells ringing when Holly Willoughby texted me to say: ‘Piers, so weird, I was just chatting to a guy who reckons he knows you and asked me for your number. I thought I’d better check with you first. He’s called Scott Chegg. Do you know him? I have a pic from his WhatsApp if you want it? X’
‘Never heard of him,’ I replied. ‘But ping me the photo and I’ll double- check.’ Ten seconds later, an image arrived of a man’s face sitting in the middle of a Scotch egg.
To say Ms Willoughby was ecstatic about catching me out with this viral prank is the understatement of the year. There were so many crying-with-laughter emojis in her reply, I’m surprised she didn’t drown in her own smug virtual tears.
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 3 My Good Morning Britain colleague Ranvir Singh is lighting up Strictly Come Dancing with her stunningly good performances, prompting her dance partner Giovanni Pernice to announce that for the next series he wants me and him to be the first-ever male same-sex couple.
‘I would love to dance with him, sexy Piers,’ he said. ‘I would love to get down with him on the dancefloor and see what he’s really made of. I would destroy his confidence in a week. In a week we will realise “Who’s this man? What is that? Is it really Piers?” ’
Hmmm. I have several thoughts about this cocky challenge.
1. I’ve already enjoyed a same-sex dance with another Italian Strictly star – Bruno Tonioli, at my 50th birthday. And Bruno’s verdict on my dancefloor moves? ‘That was sizzling Swayze in Dirty Dancing with a dash of tantalising Travolta and nifty Nureyev!’
2. Giovanni’s a 5ft 9in stick insect, and I’m a 6ft 1in lump of molten muscular gristle – and, I might add, a significantly bigger lump at the end of two wine-and-cheese-fuelled lockdowns – so I’d love to know how he intends hurling me through the air. As my habitual fat-shamer Susanna Reid said: ‘The lifts could be… interesting.’
3. I suggest Signor Giovanni watches one of my favourite movies, Rocky IV, notable for Ivan Drago sneering at Rocky Balboa: ‘I will break you!’ That didn’t end so well… for Ivan.
WEDNESDAY, DECEMBER 9 Given how much outstanding journalism there has been this year from so many brilliant journalists, I was chuffed to receive an ‘honourable mention’ in the Journalist Of The Year category at the British Journalism Awards.
At the online event (God, I can’t wait to never use those words again…), host Dominic Ponsford said: ‘There was praise from the judges for a journalist who felt like a modern-day Cassandra with their early and forceful warnings about the seriousness of the pandemic and who has consistently and forcefully held the Government to account while engaging a mass audience: GMB’s Piers Morgan.’
For the less scholarly among you, Cassandra was a priestess in Greek mythology handed the power of prophecy by a love-struck Apollo, but who was later cursed by him after she rejected his advances, so that no one would ever believe her accurate warnings of impending doom. Coincidentally, Cassandra was also reputed to be ‘astonishingly beautiful’.
THURSDAY, DECEMBER 10 Talking of ancient Greece, astonishing beauty and awards, Susanna Reid is 50 today and received an unexpected birthday present when she was announced as possessor of the world’s ‘Best Bum’.
According to Harley Street cosmetic surgeon Dr Riccardo Frati – who studied myriad celebrity posteriors for his survey using the ‘Golden Ratio’ perfect-measurement system devised by Greek mathematicians ( Leonardo Da Vinci used it to illustrate the optimum human male body in his iconic drawing Vitruvian Man) – Susanna has the ideal 3-2-3 ‘bottom-waist-breast’ proportions.
Of course, my arch-feminist co-presenter would normally recoil in faux horror at such shameful objectification of her body.
‘I want to be judged on my brains, not my looks,’ she regularly spits at me when I dare to comment on her appearance.
Yet oddly, when I told her she’d beaten off Kim Kardashian, Beyoncé and J-Lo to the title of world’s best backside, Susanna began dementedly punching the air and screaming jubilantly like Meg Ryan in When Harry Met Sally: ‘YES! YES! YES!’
Happy Birthday, Susanna – you hot piece of a**.