Piers Morgan (14 page)

And so it went on, until the relationship changed dramatically, so much so that they are – if not exactly friends – a good deal more tolerant of one another than previously. Matters changed dramatically in 2007, three years after Piers had left the
Mirror
, when Dylan Jones, editor of
GQ
magazine, arranged for him to interview Naomi in a mutual publicity coup. He described the result as ‘incendiary’ and he was probably right.

Piers started as he meant to go on. ‘Right, Naomi, when the
Mirror
lost its infamous court battle the first time around, I stood on the steps of the High Court and called you a “lying, drug-abusing, egotistical, pampered,
self-deluded
prima donna”,’ he began.

‘Yes, you did,’ said Naomi, who was to come across considerably better in this interview than she usually did.

‘Would you debate any of those?’

‘Er, I’m not self-deluded.’

Campbell went on to say that she regretted her chronic lateness, first took drugs when she was twenty-four years old and had indeed become an addict.

She also put up a spirited defence of her right to privacy: ‘I don’t think anyone should be exposed for taking drugs. That person is ill, they are sick.’ And she was of the view that drugs should never be legalised, and not unreasonably pointed out that, in many cases, alcohol is just as harmful; she also put up a reasonable explanation for drugs in the world of modelling.

She went on to speak up for her fellow model Kate Moss, who had been exposed in the
Mirror
for taking drugs (Piers was long gone by that time). ‘I was upset that she was treated that way,’ she said. ‘She is hurting herself and, when it’s exposed, she doesn’t have the space or time to help herself because everyone is looking at her. It’s hard.’

Most of all, though, she was completely open about why she was being interviewed by Piers Morgan, of all people – the man who many felt had gone too far. ‘Because I wanted to talk to you,’ she explained. ‘A lot of my friends didn’t want me to do this and I haven’t told some of them that I am doing it because they were so upset about what I went through with the court case. But I don’t hold grudges, Piers, and I feel stronger and I’m in a different place in my life. And I understand you were selling newspapers. But it did hurt, and you should know that.’

Nor would she accept his explanation that they were just trying to show the situation in a positive light.

They continued along the lines of a regular interview, with Naomi proving to be quite a sport, until the tables turned. Piers had not been warned of this in advance but, suddenly, she pulled out a large notebook and began interviewing him. He went along with it. After all, what else could he have done? The occasion had been a brilliant success and, from then on, the two were almost friends.

It certainly hadn’t been like that with David Yelland, one of Piers’ prime targets, although it must be said that Yelland was no statuesque supermodel. But Yelland was by no means the person with whom Piers had the biggest feud: that honour goes to Jeremy Clarkson, who at one point actually threw a punch at him. The trouble started in 2000, when Piers was given a picture of Jeremy kissing a woman other than his wife and chose to publish it. (Clarkson, incidentally, has it that the feud began when Piers approached him to leave the
Sun
and write for the
Mirror
instead, but he turned him down.) However, the paper did not go particularly big on the story because, so Piers was later to say, Jeremy made a personal appeal to him to go easy – ‘Look, Piers, I’m going to tell you something now: I’m not capable of having an affair, I’m not physically capable’ – an allegation that came out a good deal later, when things became really nasty.

A year or so later, another picture of Jeremy kissing the same woman – a BBC employee – came to light, and this time the gloves really were off. Piers went big on the story, causing an enraged response from Clarkson that was played out in several chapters. The first came about
in October 2003, when both were invited to take part in Concorde’s last-ever flight. ‘I hope I am sitting near Piers Morgan,’ Jeremy told Simon Kelner, the editor of the
Independent
, the night before the flight. ‘Then you’ll have a story because I’m going to punch that little shit’s lights out.’ He very nearly managed it, too.

Afterwards, other members of the flight reported that ‘banter’ took place between them, but it was more than that; as soon as Jeremy set eyes on Piers, he snarled, ‘Let’s sort it out now,’ as he rolled up his sleeves. Given the plane was about to take off, it wasn’t really practical; instead, Jeremy contented himself with pouring the contents of his champagne into Piers’ lap. (Or, according to some sources, his glass of water.)

The next occasion was in March 2004. This time, the two were at the British Press Awards, always a pretty riotous affair, at the Park Lane Hilton in London. Drink flowed, and, in the early hours, Jeremy let his temper get the better of him. This time, he did lash out, punching Piers three times and knocking him to the ground.

But Piers made light of it all. ‘They were three pitiful blows. I have had bigger drubbings from my three-year-old son,’ he declared. ‘There has been a simmering volcanic rage since we published the photos of Clarkson. I upset him at the Press Awards when I suggested his wife would be happier if he did not embrace other women.’

‘He’s won,’ snapped Clarkson. ‘I’ve hurt my finger and he’s fine.’

Piers was then asked by Lynn Barber in the
Observer
whether it wasn’t a bit unkind to have gone public with the remark about Clarkson not being physically capable. ‘Ah, diddums! Poor little diddums!’ Piers retorted. ‘You’ll start telling me I should feel sorry for Ian Hislop next. Do me a favour! These guys dish it out – they just don’t like it up ’em. If Clarkson wants to punch me, that’s his problem. I’d just like to say through the annals of this august organ that, if he does it again, especially when I’ve had a few, and now I’m not in a position of any proper responsibility, the phrase “sack of potatoes”springs to mind.’

Nor was this the end of it. ‘I still have a two-inch scar from his ring down the right side of my forehead,’ Piers revealed sometime later. ‘Never could stand jewellery on a man.’

‘Piers Morgan, you are an arsehole,’ was Clarkson’s response.

Another of Piers’ feuds is with the journalist AA Gill, who, coincidentally or not, is close friends with Jeremy Clarkson. As so often with these spats, the origins are shrouded in mystery, with both sides claiming different stories, but what was certainly true was that, as Piers’ television career really began to take off in 2003, Gill – a television critic – was never slow to pour bile into his reviews.

Rather mysteriously, Gill’s girlfriend Nicola Formby appeared to be involved. Also a journalist, she had taken Piers out to lunch to interview him before, for some reason, showing him a series of extremely provocative pictures of herself.

‘You could see everything and the poses were explicit,’ said Piers. ‘Ms Formby sprawled here, Ms Formby’s
legs akimbo there, Ms Formby thrusting her bottom everywhere. She obviously thinks she’s an absolute sex kitten, but I fear the mists of time have taken their toll a little too much.’

Given this, perhaps unsurprisingly AA Gill did not find it within himself to be generous to Piers. Several years later, he went on to present a television show with Amanda Platell, which Gill branded ‘jaw-droppingly grim’ and ‘huggably appalling’.

‘Oh, dreadful little man, absolutely dreadful! Disgusting,’ said Piers in return.

The incident with the photographs simply wasn’t true, added AA Gill, at which point he was asked why he didn’t sue. ‘Oh, because I’m never going to sue anyone, ever. I think Piers Morgan is a pretty objectionable self-publicist, but he has no room in my head – I know what the truth is.’

He didn’t let it go, either: his role as a television reviewer afforded him plenty of opportunity to take a pop at Piers any time he liked. Of the ITV1 talent competition
Britain’s Got Talent,
he wrote, ‘The only pleasure is watching the skin-crawling Piers Morgan, Gore-Tex man, impervious to any emotion or sensitivity. He seems to have learned human as a second language, possibly from Derren Brown. He is by far and away the weirdest act in the room. His descent (ascent?) from editor of the
Mirror
to ventriloquist’s invigilator is, it must be said, one of the most comforting comeuppances of contemporary celebrity. He kept asking awful kiddie-party turns if they thought they were the sort of thing the Queen wanted to see when you knew the one
person the Queen would abdicate rather than sit next to was asking the question.’

No love lost there, then.

Then there were the other feuds, less public but nonetheless protracted. Piers and Cherie Blair famously loathed one another; he also feuded periodically with Carol Vorderman, Robbie Coltrane and Madonna. Later, after he was named Larry King’s replacement on CNN, Piers announced that he wouldn’t be having Madonna on the show ‘because she’s too old now and we have Lady Gaga’. Madonna responded in style by saying she had no idea who Piers was, but she was a big fan of Lady Gaga.

‘All a bit of a laugh, really – part of the caricature,’ chortled Piers of his feuds. According to him, Jonathan Ross is a ‘talentless little fuckwit’, while Ross himself described Piers as a ‘grotesque talent vacuum’. ‘I hate that chat-show thing, with people plugging their music or their movie in seven-minute slots,’ insisted Piers, as he himself started to become more of a chat-show host. ‘People find them boring. That’s why Ross’s ratings are down on last year, plus the issues he had with [Russell] Brand. He can’t even leer over actresses any more. He’s lost his confidence and you can see it in his show.’

In a statement to an interviewer after he left the
Mirror,
Piers admitted he would like to edit the
Sunday Times
because ‘The idea of firing Clarkson and AA Gill could be irresistible. Put that in.’

‘I like waging feuds,’ he said in 2009. ‘They get me going and make me perform better. I don’t start them, but I always
finish them. I miss it [from working on newspapers]: on newspapers every day is a feud – all editors need one to get by.’

In truth, though, it’s hard to tell why Piers was involved in quite so many feuds as he was. There was the case of professional rivalry (David Yelland), upsetting people by reporting on their private lives (Jeremy Clarkson) and then the good old desire to drum up publicity (Madonna); then there has been the public reconciliation (Naomi Campbell) and life-long antipathy (it’s hard to imagine he’ll be making it up with AA Gill any time soon). Above all, there has always been the desire to entertain.

Although he started feuding almost as soon as he entered journalism, sometimes to the bemusement of
Mirror
readers (who must have wondered why they were reading so much about the editor of the
Sun
), it probably didn’t occur to Piers at first just how much entertainment value these feuds could attract and, as time went on, such proved to be the case. Meanwhile, he was increasingly drawn to the world of entertainment; he might have started out as a showbiz reporter but he was increasingly being sucked into the real thing himself. He was still a newspaper editor with a determination to keep the
Mirror
reporting on serious news – an obsession that would ultimately land him in big trouble – but increasingly he was appearing on television, too, although at that stage it seemed more like a sideline than the direction in which his future lay.

His TV appearances were now becoming more accomplished. That early foray into
Have I Got News For You
hadn’t worked
out so well, but he was learning that television – the medium of spectacle and noise – is very different to newspapers, the medium of the written word. Piers proved a very fast learner, one who got better with every passing day.

And so in 2003, while he was still beavering away at the
Mirror,
he was given his first proper television series. At the time, no one expected this to be anything more than a one-off, but with hindsight it’s clear that it was to pave the way to his future, just as much as his ultimate sacking from the
Mirror.

Piers Morgan, television superstar, was on his way.

A
t the start of 2003, it seemed very much to be business as usual; Piers was managing to maintain both his own profile and that of the
Mirror
. He gleefully greeted the announcement that David Yelland was leaving the
Sun
to attend business school in the US with the words: ‘I wish him every success with his schoolwork.’ By then, Piers had been editing the
Mirror
for seven years and he’d now seen off a second editor at the
Sun
– he might perhaps be forgiven for feeling somewhat pleased with himself.

Rebekah Wade took over and hostilities between the two papers immediately dampened down. Ultimately to become chief executive of News International, which owned the
Sun
and its various sister papers, she was a far more obvious choice of editor than Yelland had ever been. Meanwhile, it was all change at the
Mirror
, with Sylvia ‘Sly’ Bailey taking over as managing director of the Mirror Group. The rumour was that Piers was not best pleased about this, not least because his attempt to reposition the
Mirror
as a serious newspaper had not been
wholly successful. There were tensions about the direction it should take next.

The annual hugely successful Pride of Britain Awards took place, but darker clouds now gathered in the background, too. Ever since the terrorist atrocity of September 11, there had been increased murmurings that the West was about to attack Iraq. Dictator Saddam Hussein was said to have amassed Weapons of Mass Destruction, with warnings that he could use them on Britain with as little as
forty-five
minutes’ notice. Calls to attack were coming mainly from the US, but British Prime Minister Tony Blair was sounding increasingly hawkish. Most of the written media backed a war that was by now seen as almost inevitable, but the
Mirror
refused to do so: right from the start, it warned that the Iraq War would be a disaster and Piers was to pay a heavy price for this stance – even if, years later, he would appear to have been proved right. The War duly began in March 2003, whereupon the
Mirror
warned that it would be a mistake. It maintained a highly critical stance, which was to prove unpopular with the readers – the thought being that British newspapers should support British soldiers at war – and led directly to Piers’ demise.

Indeed, he soon recognised that he’d got the mood of the public wrong. At this stage, the paper was running
front-page
photos of civilian casualties with the headline
STILL ANTI-WAR? YES, BLOODY RIGHT WE ARE.
But the readers hated it: circulation began to fall sharply, prompting a hasty editorial rethink. ‘We no longer address the anti-war issue on the front page, we just tell the story as it happens,’
Piers told one interviewer (he was always good at owning up when he got something wrong). ‘I felt that we could carry on being pretty aggressively critical on the front page and we caught a bit of a cold, to be honest. I personally slightly misjudged the way that you could be attitudinal on the front page in the way that we were once the War actually started. A fascinating thing happened, something I have not experienced in ten years editing papers – I have never seen such a switch in public opinion.’

And there was even praise for what Rebekah Wade was now doing over at the
Sun
. ‘You can see a much more aggressive approach, more gung-ho on the War. It’s not my cup of tea, but I think for her readership it’s bang on,’ declared Piers.

Of course, it helped that he had a brother in the Army (who apparently also told him to cool the negativity), but, ominously, several American journalists had recently been fired for digitally altering pictures of the War and Piers was asked if he’d do the same. ‘We’ve had a few incidents here and even the
Guardian
had one on Budget Day once,’ he said. ‘There’s always a temptation to “clean up” a picture, which can be done very quickly on a computer but we now have a strict policy where we don’t tamper with pictures… except where we’re doing so deliberately to make them entertaining and we now acknowledge we’ve done it. Given the power of computers now, not saying you’ve altered a picture is unethical.’

Printing false ones could land you in a spot of bother, too. But it wasn’t all about the War, as Piers was becoming
involved in some very different projects, too. As one of Britain’s most high-profile editors and someone who also knew the world of celebrity inside out, the previous autumn he had been approached by the BBC to make a television series about the relationship between fame and the media. It was to end up in an interview format, a precursor to what he would be doing in ITV’s
Piers Morgan’s Life Stories,
and he was certainly in a position to pull in the truly famous. Here is Piers on the type of people who took part: ‘Victoria Beckham and Jade Goody fell into the “Yes, we’ve had a lot of rubbish written about us, but it doesn’t really bother us and it’s all a bit of a game, isn’t it?” category. Heather Mills McCartney and Paul Burrell made up the “Bemused and rather hurt Fleet Street hero to zero for no really sensible reason” brigade. And Peter Mandelson and Anthea Turner placed themselves squarely in the “We’re gonna chew you up, spit you out and then dance on your ’orrible little graves” camp.’

The series, which began in April 2003, was an immediate hit. Both viewers and critics liked it (although the latter refused to become too fulsome, possibly because they were on rival papers), and Piers unquestionably turned out to have a knack for drawing people out. After all, that’s what he had started off doing, back in the days of ‘Bizarre’ – which is when he also began creating his impressive contacts book. He managed to keep making the headlines, not least when he interviewed Peter Mandelson and the latter revealed that he feared his second sacking would destroy him. (For the record, this did not prove the case.)
Then it was Heather Mills’ turn and she railed against being branded a ‘gold digger’. Following this, Paul Burrell hinted that Diana’s death was more than just an accident. Every one of these and many more made the headlines; Piers clearly maintained a feel for a good story, even if the medium had now changed.

Back at the
Mirror
, however, things were not going so well. At the Trinity Mirror annual meeting, chairman Sir Victor Blank commented that Piers was ‘not at the moment on the way out’. Though he also praised him for being a good editor, this was hardly a ringing endorsement, for the problem was Piers’ increasingly strident campaign against the War in Iraq. His stance was losing readers hand over fist, not least because it felt slightly unpatriotic, but to have changed tack now would be a public humiliation for him. While there was unease, no one was exactly sure what to do.

There was now increasing speculation that Piers really could be on his way out – that ‘serious’ agenda wasn’t helping things either – but he clung on and got on with the job. And he still had his triumphs: an interview with Tony Martin (the farmer who shot at two intruders in his home) made headlines around the country, and a letter from Princess Diana, in which she averred that a shadowy figure (who turned out to be Prince Charles) was planning to kill her in a car crash made headlines around the world. The
Mirror
then sent a reporter to work as a footman at Buckingham Palace for two months – a story that was published complete with pictures of the Queen’s breakfast
and the first day when US President George W. Bush stayed the night there – provoking a huge security row.

When Piers was causing ructions, setting the news agenda and getting himself and his paper talked about all the time, he was at his best, but the War in Iraq continued, and still the
Mirror
refused to budge on its stance. In the background, his relationship with Marina Hyde was beginning to peter out; it was a time of considerable stress. However, that television career was really beginning to take off: after his triumph at the BBC, Piers moved over to Channel 4, where he presented
The Importance of Being Famous,
a three-part series on the modern obsession with fame. This brought forward accusations of his having his cake and eating it; in print he was running a ‘serious’ newspaper, while on the screen he was enjoying a good nose around the lives of the rich and famous. Then there was the fact that he was becoming almost a celebrity himself, with a high profile that kept on growing. In fact, he was setting himself up for a huge career move, although no one – himself included – realised this at the time.

And then, at the beginning of May 2004, came the end of Piers’ career as a tabloid editor. In the past, he had taken plenty of risks (and just about got away with them), but now he went a step too far. There had already been stories of American soldiers abusing prisoners in Iraq, and indeed some pretty horrific pictures to go with them. Now it seemed that British troops could be implicated, too. The
Mirror
received – and published – photos that it said came from two soldiers in the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment,
showing members of the Army in southern Iraq beating up an Iraqi prisoner. In an attack that went on for eight hours, the man’s jaw was broken, his teeth smashed and he was urinated on before being dumped from a moving vehicle. The scenes were harrowing – but were they actually true?

‘We’ve carried out extensive checks to establish the veracity of the photographs and have no doubts about their authenticity,’ said a
Mirror
spokesman, but others weren’t so sure. Doubts were cast on numerous elements of the scene: the gun a soldier was holding was the wrong sort of SA-80 rifle; the hat was also wrong, as was the truck in which all this was supposedly going on and, given what was said to be happening to the prisoner, he looked remarkably composed.

This was serious stuff: the War – which was becoming increasingly controversial, given no Weapons of Mass Destruction in Iraq had been found for the simple reason that they didn’t exist – was still going on, and to allege this sort of abuse actually put British soldiers at risk. It also impugned their integrity at a time when they needed support from their fellow countrymen, not false claims. Piers’ anti-war campaign had been unpopular enough as it was, and running these pictures would have one of two outcomes: either validate everything he had been saying or prove to be the straw that broke the camel’s back.

At the time, it was alleged that hundreds of such pictures had been taken and were being passed among British soldiers; there were rumours that the British Military Police were planning some arrests, too. The Ministry of Defence
launched an investigation, which was made more difficult because, unlike in the American pictures, you couldn’t see anyone’s face. The victim himself was wearing a hood.

Naturally, the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment was extremely concerned. Its former commander, Colonel David Black, spoke out publicly. There were just too many inconsistencies, he said, adding the soldiers would have been wearing helmets or a beret and not floppy hats; they would also have had a regiment identification flash and the rifle should have had a sling.

‘What they’re feeling at the moment is dismay that this has occurred, disgusted at the allegations that have been made and not a little bit angry that their good name has been dragged through the mud,’ he commented. ‘It’s been a terrible shock to them. In fact, the Bedford MK – which appears in the photographs, as I gather – was not deployed by the Army to Iraq at all because of difficulties with local fuel; that vehicle can’t operate with fuel that was available in Iraq. So obviously the photograph was probably not even taken in Iraq. It will make the present soldiers serving in Iraq, be they British or coalition, their job will be much more difficult and much more dangerous. So, no matter what the motive was originally, and I couldn’t begin to speculate, it has muddied the situation desperately. It’s a tragedy.’

Criticising the War was one thing, putting soldiers’ lives at risk in an increasingly bloody battle quite another. As more and more military personnel began to express doubts about the authenticity of the pictures, calls for an inquiry
escalated and a sense of unease began to settle in among
Mirror
staff, but Piers remained adamant the pictures were authentic and that the decision to publish was right.

It was ‘outrageous and unlawful behaviour’ which ‘has been common knowledge among disgusted British servicemen in Basra for many months’, he said. ‘These two soldiers felt compelled to expose what went on because they believed it was fundamentally wrong and that it would inevitably be reported. Whether you are in favour of the War or against it, there is unanimity that this behaviour is unacceptable.’

It certainly would have been, had it actually happened, but now there was real room for doubt and senior
Mirror
executives were beginning to express concern. Meanwhile, Piers battled on. ‘We would not have published if there was any doubt that what was being presented was true,’ he insisted. And he would make ‘no apology for exposing this outrageous and unlawful behaviour, which has been common knowledge among disgusted British servicemen in Basra for many months. Nor do we believe that there is any reason to think that these photographs have been faked in any way at all, given the powerful testimony we have received.’

But the die had been cast; Piers was now in serious trouble.

As the row mounted, Armed Forces Minister Adam Ingram was forced to address MPs, while Charles Kennedy – then Leader of the Liberal Democrats – warned that the pictures, true or false, would have a ‘massive impact’ across the Muslim and Arab world. Piers was called on to appear
before the House of Commons Defence Select Committee. Matters were not helped by the fact that, over in the US, more (real) pictures of the torture of Iraqis by American soldiers were beginning to emerge at the notorious prison Abu Ghraib, and President Bush denounced the behaviour as ‘abhorrent’. Back in the UK, Prime Minister Tony Blair talked of the ‘wholly unacceptable’ behaviour in the photos, but added, ‘That’s what we went to Iraq to get rid of, not to perpetuate; the vast bulk of British troops out there would also be horrified if any such incidents had taken place.’