The ego has rebranded: Piers Morgan — the world's most consistently unsilenced man talks cancel culture again...
His ego-drenched tell-all about his GMB flounce is every ounce the namedropping, shame-free rant you'd expect.
When Piers Morgan walked off the Good Morning Britain (GMB) set, I said it was a worked-shoot — a wrestling term for an event that seems unplanned but is actually scripted — and I stand by that.
Now we’ve reached the next stage of Morgan’s move from one franchise to another — the self-aggrandising promo in which the wrestler boasts and calls out their rivals. Inevitably, Morgan’s done that in The Mail on Sunday, since he still has a huge contract with the Mail titles.
Beneath an online headline that stuffs in as many SEO terms as possible — PIERS MORGAN: The REAL truth. Writing for the first time about his dramatic exit from GMB after saying he didn't believe Meghan's 'truth' on racism and the Royals, our columnist defends free speech - and says the silent majority hate the tyranny of woke — Morgan gives his perspective on the events before, during, and after his departure from GMB in diary format.
Given that he’s ‘revealed all’ in two previous books of diaries — The Insider: The Private Diaries of a Scandalous Decade (which covers his time on the tabloids) and Don't You Know Who I Am?: Insider Diaries of Fame, Power and Naked Ambition (about his ‘celebrity’ life) — that he’s stuck with writing one is not a surprise. A third volume is inevitable.
On the strength of the Mail on Sunday piece, the final part of the Morgan trilogy will drop more names than a dyspraxic sign painter. In the aftermath of his conscious uncoupling from GMB, Morgan claims that practically every celebrity either slagged him off on Twitter or sent him a heartfelt note about how his gargoyle gurning got them through in the mornings.
Morgan’s recounting of Monday, March 8, 2020 — the day on which he said on air that he did not believe Meghan Markle’s words about her mental health — is more of what we’ve heard already: defensive, self-deluding and sensationalist. He sounds like every pub bore desperate to say the word — you know which one — and ranting that they don’t have a racist bone in their body:
Dr Shola Mos-Shogbamimu called me a 'liar' and a 'disgrace' and said: 'You constantly use your platform as a wealthy white privileged man with power and influence to aggravate and escalate the bigoted, sexist, racist and misogynist attacks on Meghan Markle.'
Trisha Goddard branded me a 'bully' and said: 'Sorry Piers, you don't get to call out what is and isn't racism to black people. You can call out all the other stuff you want, but leave the racism stuff to us, eh?'
So, because I'm white, I'm not allowed to doubt the validity of Meghan Markle's two racism claims against the Royal Family, one of which has already been proved to be based on a lie?
Just a few paragraphs later, he implies that the Duchess of Sussex is a snake and uses the analogy of a drive-by shooting. What could possibly inspire him to reach for that wording?
No, it appears that questioning Meghan's fork-tongued 'truth' is now a racist hate crime.
Whereas her spray-gunning her family on global TV, just as she allegedly spray-gunned her young female Palace staff who've accused her of serious bullying, is a brave victim finally finding her silenced voice.
He ends Monday 8th’s diary entry by claiming that it was, in fact, him who asked for Alex Beresford to come onto the show and debate the issues with him:
Alex Beresford, GMB's occasional stand-in weatherman, messaged me saying I needed to better understand Meghan Markle's racism claims from the perspective of mixed-race people like himself.
I told the team to get him in tomorrow so we can debate it on air.
Note the shade in that description of Beresford.
Morgan begins the entry for Tuesday 9th March by complaining of not sleeping well — understandable — and reflecting on the debates of the past year or so:
A bad night of broken sleep.
It's been a strange, stressful 12 months for everyone, and I've been in the thick of all the increasingly toxic debates – whether about the pandemic, or those other hot-button issues of Brexit, Trump and the Sussexes.
Piers Morgan complaining about the toxicity of public debate is like a pellet of uranium 235 moaning about the state of Chernobyl.
While he describes himself later in the piece as a “snowflake smasher” — hardly something that requires all that much strength — Morgan introduces his back-and-forth with Beresford as beginning with “a very personal attack”; attack here defined as “not agreeing with Piers Morgan”.
As [Alex Beresford] delivered his censorious lecture, implying my only motivation for disbelieving Ms Markle's outlandish interview claims was because she 'ghosted' me four years ago after we'd been friendly for 18 months – I genuinely couldn't care less about that, but it was informative as to her character, especially when I saw her do the same thing to many other people, including her own father – I felt the steam rising inside me.
The amount Piers Morgan couldn’t care less about being dropped by Meghan Markle is detailed in 5 years of interview appearances and articles, beginning in 2016 when the news that she was dating Prince Harry came out. When he wrote that Harry and Meghan are “the world’s most tone-deaf, hypocritical, narcissistic, deluded, whiny brats” and “appallingly bitter, staggeringly self-obsessed, utterly deluded, and woefully tone-deaf laughing stocks,” I reassessed my previous view on how many mirrors Morgan must have in his house.
Ironically, given that he dismissed Meghan’s claims about her mental state in part because she has such a pampered life, multi-millionaire Morgan writes about his own stress and anxiety:
Realising I might say something I'd regret, I decided to leave the studio to cool down.
As I walked off, Alex doubled down: 'This is pathetic. Absolutely diabolical behaviour. I'm sorry but Piers spouts off on a regular basis and we all have to sit here and listen. From 6.30 to 7am yesterday, it was incredibly hard to watch. He has the ability to come in here and talk from a position that he doesn't fully understand…'
I didn't hear any more of his diatribe, as I was out the door and heading for my dressing room.
I knew it wasn't a good look, the great snowflake-basher running away from confrontation. And on reflection, I shouldn't have done it.
But in the heat of the moment, in my rather strained state of mind, this seemed the less worse option.
I believe that Morgan felt anxious, angry, and frustrated. I also note that while he sees his own rants as putting the world to rights and challenging power, he dismisses Beresford’s words as a “diatribe”.
Later in the piece, Morgan once again demonstrates his strategic use of facts and opinions. Back when Prince Harry and Meghan were getting married, he wrote that her family was “a bunch of repulsive PR-crazed Kardashians, exploiting their girl’s royal romance for as much money and residual fame as they can squeeze out of it.”
But now Thomas Markle, Meghan’s father, is useful to him, Piers writes:
Later, we interviewed her estranged father Thomas, who she hasn't spoken to since 2018 and who she's now accused of 'betrayal' in a new interview clip released by CBS.
'I genuinely can't imagine doing anything to intentionally cause pain to my child,' said the woman trashing her family and her husband's family on prime-time TV. Mr Markle denied there was racism at the heart of the Monarchy, saying: 'I don't think the British Royal Family are racist at all.'
Of course, he was then abused on Twitter too.
Yes, a man who married a black woman, and brought up their bi-racial daughter on his own for many years, was attacked for not understanding Meghan's 'lived experience' of racism, and therefore, de facto, exposing himself as a racist.
Just absurd.
Once again, harsh things that Piers Morgan says are ‘criticism’ but any strong words directed towards him or people he agrees with are ‘abuse’.
After writing about the growing pressure on ITV’s management to do something about him, Morgan drops a name with a resounding clang:
To compound my growing twitchiness, I got a text from my old foe Jeremy Clarkson that read: 'I am completely on your side.'
There’s the professional wrestling of British politics and media at work again. In 2002, Morgan published pictures of Clarkson in a clinch with a woman who wasn’t his wife. In 2004, Clarkson punched Morgan in the face at the Press Awards. They continued to slag each other off for the next ten years before they purported to have sorted things out during a long session in the pub. Blokes! Blokes! Blokes!
Of course, Clarkson and Morgan are on the same side. They’re practically the same person — a bumptious bully who keeps failing upwards, their words and actions never seeming to truly catch up with them.
Asked by ITV to apologise or go, Morgan writes the most cringe-worthy passage in an article that already contains 100% of your daily allowance of displaced embarrassment:
I pondered what my manager John Ferriter, who guided my career for 12 years and persuaded me to do GMB but who sadly died 16 months ago, would have said. 'Talk to me, John,' I muttered, in a moment reminiscent of that scene in Top Gun where Maverick begs his dead buddy Goose to guide him on what to do after he bugs out of aerial combat with the Russians.
Yes, Piers Morgan sees himself as Maverick, when we all know he’s Iceman without the redeeming features or redemption arc.
Inevitably — especially given the subject of his last book Wake Up — Morgan decides that the situation is about ‘wokery’ and that he will not be ‘silenced’ by his bosses requiring him to make an apology:
Suddenly, I reached a moment of total gut clarity: fuck it, I wasn't going to apologise for disbelieving Meghan Markle, because the truth is that I don't believe Meghan Markle.
And in a free, democratic society, I should be allowed not to believe someone, and to say that I don't believe them.
That, surely, is the very essence of freedom of speech?
If I said I now believed Meghan, I would be lying to the audience, the very thing I've accused her of doing.
And even if I did apologise, that wouldn't be the end of it. The woke brigade would keep coming for me, demanding I apologise for everything else they find offensive – which of course, is absolutely everything.
The word ‘fuck’ is starred out in the original Mail On Sunday copy but I don’t go for that kind of mimsy bollocks here. I’m surprised Morgan would let the Mail on Sunday censor him like that…
It’s quite clear that Morgan saw an opportunity to ditch GMB and the obscenely early mornings that come with it in spectacular style and set himself up for an even more lucrative contract elsewhere. He explicitly references as much in the entry for Wednesday 10th March:
ITV's share price has plunged by five per cent since news of my departure from GMB broke, valuing me at £250 million, which is £52 million more than the world's most expensive footballer, Neymar.
That should come in handy in my future contract negotiations!
But he begins that section of the piece by expressing his disappointment at the way Susanna Reid addressed his departure:
At 6.30am, I turned on GMB to see what my 'TV wife' Susanna would say about our sudden divorce.
Stony-faced, she read a short, rather frosty statement… Jeez, even my real ex-wife talks more fondly about me than that (and, in fact, did so overnight in a very supportive message).
Of course, in the next part of the article — the entry for Thursday 11 March — Morgan ‘graciously’ accepts Reid’s apology for her performance…
She apologised for the tone of her chilly goodbye, which was for all the reasons I suspected, and I apologised for leaving her in the lurch so suddenly.
… and moves swiftly on to listing more celebrities who either attacked him — great, more feuds for him to foster for cash — or sent him emollient messages of support. And, of course, there’s an opportunity to attack Alex Beresford again:
I've had nice messages from all the other GMB presenters, apart from Alex Beresford, and many of the wonderful production team, from camera operators and producers to make-up artists.
Some really moved me.
'Gutted to hear this news,' texted Dr Hilary Jones. 'You hold politicians to account like no one else can. You support the underprivileged people with no voice. You are generous, hugely well researched and funny. My respect for you has grown exponentially this year and I shall miss you my friend. The country actually needs you even if some people don't know it. We've lost our General and you are sadly missed already.'
Piers’ arse has been polished so clean that he wishes to display it to the world. He goes on to mention that he’ll still be making programmes for ITV. So cancelled, so silenced, so… well remunerated.
The next diary entry — Saturday, 13 March — continues to detail how celebrities and “so many members of the public” keep telling Morgan how marvellous he is and how he must fight against the woke and if he doesn't mind could he tell them how they can buy his book, Wake Up, available from all good bookshops…
Sunday 14 March’s entry is just a reminder that Donald Trump knows who he is and has supported him.
The entry for Tuesday 16 March is a screed about the Sussexes — he's not bothered, you know — while Wednesday 17 March’s dispatch is dedicated to the news that he’s broken Ofcom’s record for the most number of complaints received about an individual. He also finds the space for an email from “one of Britain’s top QCs” supporting him and a supportive comment from Michael fucking Portillo. Ah yes, Piers Morgan scourge of the establishment is at it again.
Thursday 18th March — yes, it’s still going — is dedicated to the Sharon Osborne story (“[She’s] is paying a heavy price in America for supporting me.”). And by Friday 19th March, Morgan is dragging the tale of the incoming Teen Vogue editor who didn’t take up the job after offensive tweets she sent as a teenager were dug up and discussed.
The March 21 entry is dedicated to a ‘joke’ — please let it be a joke and not fodder for the lathe of heaven — about Morgan being Prime Minister. And the final two entries — March 25 and 26 — double down on the obsession with and attacks on Meghan Markle, expanding to a more general whine about “the woke”:
As Winston Churchill said: 'Some people's idea of it [free speech] is that they are free to say what they like but if anyone else says anything back, that is an outrage.'
To be clear: I'm not a victim and I haven't been cancelled. In fact, in many ways, this has been one of the most exciting and affirmative periods of my life.
But if our rights to free speech are denied, then democracy as we know it will die. It's time to cancel the cancel culture before it kills our culture.
Morgan wants to have it both ways — to claim that he has not been cancelled and cannot be cancelled while raging that “cancel culture is killing our culture”. While he says he’s “not a victim”, he’s just published several thousand words in The Mail on Sunday dedicated to suggesting that’s exactly what he was.
Similarly, while he tediously quotes Churchill, his own words in The Mail on Sunday piece make it abundantly clear that he is outraged when people disagree with him. He paints Beresford as a bully delivering a ‘censorious rant’ while he sees himself as a fearless truth-teller.
It’s become a cliche to point out the fact that a well-paid, well-connected, white man wailing in a national newspaper about being ‘cancelled’ is the very opposite, but Morgan takes it to the next level. He’s about to make a lot more money from another load of bad faith takes. I’m wide awake to what he’s up to…
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