Don’t ask me how I am. I’m now that crashing bore who’ll actually tell you...
WEDNESDAY, OCTOBER 20
It’s been 20 months since I was last in the US and, flying in to LA today, I felt that same flush of excitement I felt when I first flew here in 2006 to be a judge on America’s Got Talent. I don’t care who you are – when that Hollywood sign looms into view, your heart skips a beat.
But my misty-eyed sentiment didn’t last long. Tonight, as I ate at Via Alloro, my favourite local Italian in Beverly Hills, a waiter revealed that last night there was a shoot-out in the street just feet from our table, when armed robbers tried to steal a diner’s Lamborghini SUV.
Just a few months ago, a woman was shot in crossfire at another Italian restaurant named Il Pastaio in the same street, when a gang stole a jeweller’s $500,000 watch from him as he sat at a neighbouring table.
This kind of thing never used to happen in Beverly Hills.
But the Covid pandemic and George Floyd protests have sent gun ownership and gun crime rocketing among a fearful American population, in a country already awash with more than 300million firearms. As a result, nowhere feels ‘safe’ any more.
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 24
Guns aren’t the only health hazard you have to worry about in LA.
‘Ever experienced an earthquake out here?’ my youngest son Bertie, 20, asked me last night. I told him I’d endured numerous quakes of differing sizes over the 15 years I’ve spent living on and off in LA, including a biggish one (4.7 on the Richter scale) in 2009 that threw me off my bed.
(‘Surviving quakes is like sex,’ American Idol host Ryan Seacrest told me afterwards. ‘The first time is terrifying, but it gets easier the more you practise.’)
‘Wow, that sounds scary!’ Bertie exclaimed. ‘Hope it doesn’t happen to me.’
At 7am this morning, a 3.9 quake rocked LA and I instantly woke to the now-familiar bone-shuddering, room-rattling sensation.
Bertie slept right through it.
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 1
I’ve flown on to New York, which like LA feels more anxietyridden than normal.
This is hardly surprising when you consider the US murder rate soared by 30 per cent last year, the largest rise in a century, and New York’s by a staggering 47 per cent.
In fact, more people have been dying in the Big Apple lately from gun violence than from Covid. So New Yorkers are shuffling around in masks (most people here still wear them outside, including kids, and everyone has to when entering public places like shops or restaurants), looking as scared of being shot as they are of catching the virus.
THURSDAY, NOVEMBER 4
On a positive note, all my favourite New York restaurants are back open, including Marea (Jay-Z was there the night before me, apparently guzzling caviar at $365 a portion) and Ralph Lauren’s Polo Bar, but I still can’t taste wine or most food due to the 16-week-long Covid that’s destroyed my senses – I can’t smell anything at all – and zombified my energy levels.
Doctors have no idea why some people get it, or how long it lasts, but I can attest that it’s very boring both for the sufferers and those forced to suffer us banging on about it.
My favourite joke used to be ‘What’s the definition of a crashing bore? Someone who when you ask them how they are, actually tells you…’
I’m now that guy.
So whatever you do, don’t ask me how I am.
SUNDAY, NOVEMBER 7
Dinner with friends including Katherine Jenkins, who reacted to my arrival by recoiling in horror as if I were Hannibal Lecter. ‘DON’T TOUCH ME!’ she barked, as I moved in for our customary hello hug.
It turned out she’s on high Covid alert due to her upcoming UK tour.
Like all UK musical performers, Katherine can’t get Covid insurance for the shows, so it could be incredibly costly if she gets the virus and has to cancel them. She’s even being driven to and from her home to every venue rather than staying in hotels, to keep her ‘bubble’ as small as possible.
‘No offence, Piers,’ Katherine explained, ‘but I’ll only let you touch me if we’re both wearing Hazmat suits.
‘And to be honest, I may extend that rule specifically to you after the pandemic.’
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 8
I’m staying at The Carlyle, which is so elite that Princess Diana once shared one of its lifts with Michael Jackson and Steve Jobs. Last night, as I was having a pre-dinner spicy tomato juice at the hotel’s legendary Bemelmans Bar – where Diana’s son Prince Harry was recently seen drinking – an American woman approached me and asked: ‘Are you Piers Morgan?’
‘Guilty,’ I replied.
‘DAMMIT,’ she cried, ‘that’s cost me $1million. I bet my friend it wasn’t you. The only way she might let me off is if you go over and say hello.’
So I did, and the winner duly agreed not to collect. Then a younger lady to her left introduced herself.
‘You knew my father. I’m Harvey Weinstein’s daughter Remy.’
‘I can’t even imagine what your life’s been like these past few years,’ I replied. ‘Difficult,’ she smiled.
‘Do you have any contact with your dad?’ ‘No.’
We chatted for a few minutes, and she was incredibly nice but seemed heartbroken and fragile. I felt so sorry for her.
Weinstein had many female victims.
Remy and her sisters are among them.
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 9
I flew in to London this morning positively bursting with joy at returning to the welcoming bosom of my beloved nation.
That warm sentiment swiftly evaporated, however, when I caught up with the series finale of Spitting Image, which featured my grotesquely disfigured puppet haranguing tennis superstar Emma Raducanu for her lack of mental strength (I actually think she has bucketloads of it) and ended with the Queen blowing my brains out with a gun on live television, explaining: ‘I did it for our country’s mental health, you bloody f***wit.’
Ah, it’s great to be home!