Freddy Gray
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But Morgan, now in close-friend-of-the-Browns mode, is having no truck with negativity. ‘Sarah knew I wasn’t going to stitch him up,’ he says defensively, ‘but she knew at the same time that, through journalistic credibility, I would need to be quite punchy with the questions… otherwise it would become some ghastly love fest and that wouldn’t suit either of us. People would just say “that’s not the real him”. As it was, I think he was very sincere and very genuine.’
Would he do a similar interview with David Cameron? ‘I asked and he said no. He said he wanted to do something more significant, then announced he was doing the Alan Titchmarsh show…’ He pauses for effect. ‘I have to say I raised an eyebrow when I heard that.’
Cameron, to his mind, ‘comes over as a slightly spivvy snake-oil salesman who has got a load of his Old Etonian mates and they’re all on a bit of a jolly to take over the country.’ It’s nothing personal, Morgan insists. He says he likes Cameron and even some of the other Tories: ‘His number two, Andy Coulson, is one of my oldest friends.’
Nevertheless, he takes obvious satisfaction from the Conservatives’ recent dip in the polls. ‘If I was them,’ he says, schadenfreude spreading across his face, ‘I would be getting a bunch of lemmings and jumping off the cliff. All the talk about how Gordon Brown should step aside before the election: there’s a good argument now that Cameron should.’
The idea of Tory government horrifies him. ‘Not the current crop!’ he exclaims. ‘I think they are the most mediocre bunch I’ve seen in a long, long time. It almost makes you want to stand. I’m serious.’
He can’t be, can he? ‘I am tempted to run on a ticket of openness and frankness about the problems of this country and not being afraid to deal with them.’
The thought of the statesman Piers Stefan Pughe-Morgan (to give him his full name) almost makes sense, actually, in a weird, car-crash way. It would be a funny and fitting end to the extraordinary career of this home counties boy with a confident manner and a petulant mouth. As a journalist, press baron, TV man, celebrity, and self-publicist extraordinaire, he understands — perhaps better than anyone — the nexus of power, fame and public relations through which modern Britain is run. His elevation to public office might seem absurd, but it is not entirely unfeasible.
He’s certainly tough enough for politics. As editor of the News of the World and the Daily Mirror, his office rages would have made bullying Gordon Brown look like a wimp. ‘I once punched a hole in the wall so hard, after Alastair Campbell lied to me, that blood came out of my knuckles,’ he recalls, waving a clenched fist in the air. I point to a scar on his forehead, the result of a well-documented (by him) fight with rival celeb-bruiser Jeremy Clarkson. ‘It’s the Clarkson scar, yes,’ he says. ‘It comes out better when I’ve got a tan. He told me later, when we had a kiss-and-make-up session over a bottle of wine, that he’d broken his finger hitting me. Which I think shows the power of my head.’
Yet alongside this confrontational persona, there’s a sensitive, self-aware streak to Piers Morgan. I ask him if he cares what people think of him. ‘No,’ he answers reflexively, before adding, ‘I only care that my good friends and family know I am not the caricature they have to read about all the time. Ninety per cent of what I read about myself in the papers is negative.’ He finds his reputation as a brash slob amusing, even useful. ‘It means that when people meet me, I’m not quite as moronic as they think,’ he says. ‘They still think I’m a moron though, obviously!’
He has convictions, too. He talks about ‘Blair’s dirty war in Iraq’ — a conflict in which his brother fought — with real anger. He speaks about immigration with intensity: ‘The current system has been pathetic and has caused huge social unrest.’ And he feels particularly strongly about tackling drug abuse and the disaffection of Britain’s youth. ‘I have told Gordon Brown until I am blue in the face,’ he says, turning a little blue in the face. ‘Bring back an hour’s sport every day for every kid in the country. Not only might you get a generation of Olympians, you’d give them something to do. These kids that drift into gangs because their father has buggered off, left them with their mums who are working too hard to be able to look after them properly.’ One can almost picture him on the hustings, railing against ‘Broken Britain’.
What would Piers Morgan’s dream Cabinet look like, then? ‘I’d make Simon Cowell home secretary,’ he says. ‘I’d make Alan Sugar treasurer, chancellor. There’s all sorts of people I’d have in there. Nobody can tell me that Gordon Ramsay wouldn’t sort out food in this country, or that Sugar wouldn’t rule the Treasury with an iron fist.’ I assume he’s joking, but it’s a mistake to scoff. ‘I think the country would benefit hugely if it had Cowell, Sugar and people of that calibre in government,’ he insists. ‘I’d rather have that than a bunch of shallow boring little people in suits.’ I laugh, then look down at my shirt and tie and realise that he probably means me.
Freddy Gray is assistant editor of the Spectator.
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