Piers Morgan v Meghan Markle is TV gold but is their fight only hurting the monarchy?
Monarchist blood runs deep in the TV presenter’s veins. Harry and Meghan, however, and their disregard for duty make his blood pressure, ratings and social media likes peak.
Piers Morgan has many opinions.
Also, the sky is blue.
Whichever way you want to spin it, the world is becoming increasingly aware. Skins are as thin as tissue paper, “woke” is a label more coveted than designer fashion and more and more people are adopting “offended” as their preferred pronoun.
Morgan is the nexus. A bold bloke who is like a pine Little Trees air freshener inside a media landscape that is getting as musty as a P-plater’s second-hand Corolla.
What makes the popular broadcaster, presenter, former editor and commentator so unique in 2023 is not only his ability to reinvent himself and articulate his often brash thoughts, he’s also open-minded and open to hearing out different points of view.
This social and political maelstrom coincidentally, and fortuitously for him, also happens to make good TV these days too. And even better TikToks. His official account publishes 90-second vignettes almost daily to its 860,000 fans, the majority of the clips then clock up an average of 300,000 views. Beef is the new currency and Morgan is the Mallee bull parading around the arena.
He is a media chameleon. A Fleet Street editor (who got sacked), author of the juiciest media diaries, breakfast TV star (a gig he also stormed out of … and then got sacked, again) and now prime-time host of Piers Morgan Uncensored, which is marking one year on air this week in the UK, US and here in Australia.
Despite what his detractors – most of them on social media – suggest, he’s into old-school debate and “common sense”, which has seen him painted as the new patron saint of conservatism.
He was a friend of the late Barry Humphries and called the Melbourne International Comedy Festival organisers “gutless cowards” who “cancelled him for standing up for women’s rights. You don’t get to un-cancel him now he’s dead”.
“It‘s interesting, isn’t it?” Morgan told The Australian, somewhat bemused at his new niche. “When I talk to (US political satirist) Bill Maher he and I are basically, what we would call old-fashioned, slightly left-to-centre liberals, you know, in the old-fashioned sense that our values are what used to be called liberal. But that was really just about believing in democracy and believing in having debates with people and going having a pint with them and all that,” he said. “I’m not saying that I’m a traditional conservative, what’s interesting is the left has gone so far, it’s nutty that even people like me and Bill look kind of vaguely conservative. Think about that. The centre has shifted. Where old-fashioned slightly left-to-centre liberals now get confused by the woke brigade of being to the right.
“But that’s really more indicative of how far left the ‘wokies’ have gone and how crazy they have become. So I think that the challenge for conservatives is probably just to be a sensible, commonsense alternative to the madness. That seems to me to be a very electable, winning ticket. If you’re just not a mad one.”
What grates on those who wish to pin his ideology on the political spectrum is that you can’t. He’s fluid in that regard. He’s an outspoken critic of US gun laws (a position that made him deeply unpopular during his first tenure on CNN, which ended in 2014) and Prince Harry and Meghan Markle.
There are three things he will defend – unreservedly and unapologetically – Arsenal, Jofra Archer’s wicket-taking record and his primal urge to see Australia lose at Lord’s in June, and the monarchy.
“When I was interviewing stars for The Sun as a cub reporter, I really wanted to be famous myself. It seemed an exciting, glamorous life. I even regularly appeared in my own column, with my arm draped around celebrities, and rather enjoyed the subliminal fame-by-association it brought me,” Morgan wrote in one of his many pervy memoirs called Don’t You Know Who I Am? Insider Diaries of Fame, Power and Naked Ambition.
Happy 50th birthday â¦@sachin_rtâ© - a master with the bat, and an absolute gentleman on and off a cricket field. He even had the good grace to laugh here as I gave the late, great Shane Warne advice on how to bowl a doosra. Have a great day, Sachin. pic.twitter.com/a8y1xpnLkE
— Piers Morgan (@piersmorgan) April 24, 2023
“As an editor I became more cynical about the ‘star’ business, having seen at first-hand how f..ked up, egotistical, haughty and self-deluded so many of them are.”
He’s consistent. He now attributes that latter consensus, originally published in 2008, to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex.
Morgan has had a long association with the royal family. Lunching with Princess Diana and a teenage Prince William (who snuck a sip of wine) at Kensington Palace, and watching Charles go from “misunderstood, ahead of his time” prince to “of his time monarch” and Camilla from “no-frills country woman to an equally no-fuss Queen”.
The monarchist blood runs deep in his veins. His mother camped on the Mall overnight for King Charles’ first wedding to Diana and Prince Andrew’s wedding to Sarah Ferguson. His parents ran a country pub and organised street parties for Queen Elizabeth II’s many jubilees. Morgan has also anchored some of the biggest modern royal events for US television, including the Queen’s funeral and the upcoming coronation for Fox News on May 6.
Harry and Meghan, however, and their disregard for duty make his blood pressure, ratings and social media likes peak.
“Meghan Markle is done in this country,” he said “She’s got what she wanted. She began her life in California and she’s ending it in California. Back within four years in her home state living a lead in The Life of Riley with millions in the bank, celebrity status and a handsome prince that she’s wrestled away from Britain. Good luck to her,” he added.
“But Harry is in an altogether more problematic situation because he remains the King’s son. He has got to stop this relentless assault on the family in public.
“I don’t understand why you’re still allowed to use royal titles because it’s the most cynical exploitation of royal titles I think we’ve ever seen. To trash the monarchy and the royal family constantly for hundreds of millions of dollars with these huge deals, but to continue to call yourself the Duke of Sussex, seems to me extraordinarily hypocritical.
“He’s not a kid and he is obviously keen to try and maintain some kind of relationship with Charles. And I understand that, as a father you typically want that. You don‘t want to completely disown him. But at the same time, allowing Harry to continue to parade around with the other royals during these big events with status (like the coronation) just so he can then go back to America and cash in on that royal connection. It’s disgusting. And on top of that then he continues trashing his family, which he does constantly in books, TV series and podcasts, and all the rest of it. It’s wanting his royal cake and eating it too. Enough. Time’s up for these shameless grifters.”
He later parroted the same thoughts recently on Piers Morgan Uncensored.
Morgan’s latest TV project opened in April 2022 with a wide-ranging sit-down interview with former president Donald Trump.
Morgan, coincidentally, just marked his one-year on-air anniversary with Stormy Daniels, the adult film star who allegedly had a brief relationship with Trump and was then paid by the former president’s lawyers to remain silent about it.
“I’ve spent most of my career doing a lot of varied interviews with people from right across the divides,” he said. “I’ve never pigeonholed myself into being a political journalist or an entertainment journalist or any of these things. I just see myself fundamentally as a journalist, and I will interview anyone who I think is worthy and is a crucial part of a big story.”
Other interview subjects in the past month alone include tennis legend Martina Navratilova about her double cancer diagnosis, beleaguered Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, Florida Governor (and emerging Trump nemesis) Ron DeSantis and Daniels.
“It was supposed to happen live and remotely but then she just disappeared. She had some death threats. And then, by pure luck, I happened to be going to Los Angeles and she happened to be going to LA to make one of her adult films. Which, it’s important to add, I did not participate in,” he laughed.
“Afterwards I remember thinking that even by the sort of standards of my career trajectory with four very different people, straddling two continents in the space of 17 days (it) was pretty wild … That’s what I love doing, I love doing it so dearly. I have lots of opinions. I think everybody knows that.”
Trump famously walked out on Morgan during their interview, claiming he was “very dishonest”, and 12 months to the day so too did this cricket-loving (and patriotic) correspondent. With the Ashes looming, he is confident of an England whitewash of Australia, and those aforementioned opinions are offered up – unprompted, mind you – again.
“I’ve been texting Dave (Warner) warning him. You are going to get absolutely dismantled, limb by limb. It’s going to be great as you usually do that to us. It’ll be the cricketing equivalent of those barbies you love so much,” he smirked sarcastically before continuing amid protests to stop, “ … on Bondi Beach with all your friends. That’s what is going to happen to your batting order.”
Watch Piers Morgan Uncensored Tuesday to Friday from 11pm on Sky News Australia.
