Shooting Straight: Guns, Gays, God, and George Clooney

by Morgan, Piers

  Tonight, O’Donnell came on my CNN show to promote her new autobiography, aptly named Troublemaker, in which she openly discusses the many controversies in her career to date. She’s admitted dabbling in witchcraft, has publicly espoused views on ‘sexual purity’ so severely puritanical they make Mitt Romney look racy and thinks gay people have an ‘identity disorder’.

  It all started friendly enough, but then I began to detect a certain frisson of tension entering the conversation as I quizzed her over the aforementioned controversies. ‘I address it all in the book,’ she kept saying, bizarrely refusing to actually make any further comment.

  Eventually I asked her what her view was of gay marriage.

  ‘I address that stuff in the book,’ she sniffed.

  ‘Yes, you’re here to promote your damn book!’

  ‘You’re borderline being a little rude,’ she fumed.

  ‘I’m baffled why you think I’m being rude – I’m just asking you questions based on your own public statements and what you’ve written in your book. Why are you being so weird about this?’

  ‘I’m not being weird. You’re being a little rude. I’m promoting the policies that I lay out in the book that are mostly fiscal, constitutional. That’s what I want to talk about. Don’t you think as a host that if I say this is what I want to talk about, that’s what we should address?’

  ‘Not really, no, you’re a politician.’

  At which point O’Donnell looked to someone off camera before saying: ‘OK, I’m being pulled away here.’ Her publicist person then jumped up and blocked the camera, creating a sinister, and yet deeply comical, big black shadow across the screen.

  ‘Where are you going?’ I asked. ‘You’re leaving?’

  ‘I was supposed to be speaking at the Republican Women’s Club at 6 p.m., and I chose to be a little late for that – not to endure rude talk show hosts, but to talk to you about my book and to talk about the issues that I address in my book. Have you read the book?’

  ‘Yes, but these issues I raised are in your book. That’s my point. You talk about them.’

  ‘OK, all right. Are we off? Are we done?’ she snapped.

  ‘I’m not, I’m still here …’ I replied.

  But she wasn’t, and marched out of the studio.

  ‘It would appear,’ I informed the viewers, ‘that the interview has just ended because I had the audacity to ask questions about stuff that’s in this book. Anyway, it’s a good book. It’s called Troublemaker, and I think we all now know why!’

  Within a few hours the walkout had become a hot news story.

  FRIDAY, 19 AUGUST 2011

  Christine O’Donnell appeared on various media outlets including the Today Show and decided that attack was the best form of defence over an incident that’s been dominating the headlines for thirty-six hours now.

  She claimed her walkout had nothing to do with me asking her about gay marriage but happened because I was ‘obsessed with sex’. Furthermore, I was a ‘little creepy’, a ‘cheeky bugger’ and my questions had been ‘borderline sexual harassment’.

  All of which was completely baffling to anyone who had actually watched the interview, as I’d demonstrably been none of those things. Well, possibly the ‘cheeky bugger’ bit. Even hosts and commentators on Fox News, the unofficial mouthpiece for the Tea Party, lambasted her for making a bad situation even worse.

  But hey, who’s complaining? The walkout attracted big ratings and everyone’s talking about my show.

  Tonight, music producer David Foster threw a dinner party at his sumptuous Malibu beachside house for Barbra Streisand and me to meet each other properly, as he had promised a few weeks ago when I interviewed him.

  There were fourteen other guests, including Donna Summer, and US TV personalities Regis Philbin and Dr Phil McGraw.

  Barbra and I were seated next to each other at the dinner table, and for two hours, we barely exchanged a word with anyone else. It’s so rare to meet a personal hero who lives up to your expectations, but Barbra was, if anything, even more impressive than I imagined: smart, funny, warm, engaging and politically astute.

  Halfway through the meal, David suggested I sing to the group.

  He was joking, but the wine had flowed and I seized the moment, dropping on bended knee, grasping Barbra’s hand and crooning a quite spectacularly bad rendition of ‘The Way We Were’ to her as he raced to the piano and accompanied me.

  As I wailed away, I caught sight of Donna Summer actually grimacing.

  ‘That was very … nice, thank you,’ said Barbra who then exploded into fits of giggles.

  ‘Will you sing for us later?’ I asked.

  ‘Nooooo,’ she replied, firmly. ‘I never sing at parties.’

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘I feel uncomfortable performing to an audience where I can see the faces looking at me. I’ve always suffered from stage fright, but as long as I can’t see the faces, I’m usually OK. Singing at a dinner party like this would freak me out!’

  SUNDAY, 21 AUGUST 2011

  Celia and I spent the afternoon musing possible names for our little girl.

  ‘I think Delphine is a lovely name,’ she suggested.

  I Googled it.

  ‘It means “to look or act like a dolphin”.’

  ‘Jeez. Well, how about Elise? I think that’s beautiful.’

  I checked its origin. It’s a French name, meaning ‘God’s promise’.

  I said it out loud a few times. I like it.

  THURSDAY, 25 AUGUST 2011

  A large hurricane, named Irene, has clattered along the East Coast of America, causing huge damage.

  It also sparked a heated debate between Jonathan and me tonight over how to pronounce the word ‘hurricane’.

  The English way is ‘hurri-cun’; the American way is ‘hurri-cain’.

  ‘You’re in America, so you should say it how we say it,’ he said, after I used my own version at the top of the show.

  ‘But I’m not American, and nowhere in my contract does it say I have to speak American.’

  ‘You’re talking to an American audience, so why say words in a way they don’t say them?’

  ‘It’s our language, you just changed it.’

  ‘For the better.’

  ‘How many schools teach American in America?’

  ‘What do you mean?’

  ‘I mean, the answer is zero. They teach English. Do the maths.’

  ‘It’s “math”.’

  THURSDAY, 8 SEPTEMBER 2011

  Seven years ago, I was frog-marched out of my office at the Daily Mirror after being fired for publishing what were claimed to be ‘fake’ photos of British troops from the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment abusing Iraqi civilians in 2003.

  I’ve never fully accepted the pictures were necessarily faked, mainly because the incident depicted in them was never denied, and the soldiers who brought them to us were credible. And also because the people crying ‘fake’ were the government (which had just led us into a war insisting, falsely, that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction) and the QLR itself, which had a vested interest in discrediting the Mirror’s revelations.

  Today, the long-awaited investigation into the activities of the QLR was published. It focused on the appalling torture and murder of Iraqi hotel receptionist Baha Mousa. But it also covered the wider malpractice of QLR soldiers in Iraq following the supposed end of the war in 2003. The findings were devastating.

  Civilian detainees had been beaten with metal bars, had lighter fuel poured over them, toilets flushed over their head. They were kept handcuffed, hooded and in stress positions in ‘extreme heat and squalid conditions’.

  In the most disgusting of all revelations, one soldier, a corporal called Donald Payne, had played ‘choir’ with his victims, kicking and punching them in sequence to create musical tunes from their groans.

  Oh, and the report confirmed that ‘trophy photographs’ were taken of the beatings.

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nbsp; Sir William Gage, the retired judge who presided over the inquiry, described it as an ‘appalling episode of serious, gratuitous violence … cowardly assaults and abuse’. And further, that there had been a ‘loss of discipline and moral courage’ by officers and soldiers alike.

  General Sir Peter Wall, head of the British army, said the report ‘cast a dark shadow on the reputation of the army and must not happen again’.

  I still don’t know for sure if those pictures the Mirror published were genuine. I’ve never seen conclusive evidence they weren’t.

  But what we all now know from this report is that rogue elements of the Queen’s Lancashire Regiment did indeed commit a series of atrocities against Iraqi civilians, many far worse than the Mirror ever alleged, and took celebratory photographs (like the ones we published) as they did so.

  It’s not contradictory to be 100 per cent supportive of our magnificent armed forces – of which many of my family are, and have been, members – and detest this kind of shameful behaviour from a few bad apples.

  I remain proud of the Mirror’s role in exposing it.

  FRIDAY, 9 SEPTEMBER 2011

  The tenth anniversary of 9/11 is on Sunday, and tonight I recorded a quite extraordinary interview with a man called Howard Lutnick.

  He’s the boss of Wall Street firm Cantor Fitzgerald, which had its corporate headquarters on the 101st to 105th floors of One World Trade Center.

  On the morning of the terrorist attack, Lutnick would have been at his desk as normal, but was otherwise engaged taking his young son Kyle to his first day at kindergarten.

  Lutnick heard the news of the first plane hitting, and raced down to see what was happening. He arrived just after the second plane struck, and ran for his life, ending up face-down in the street, covered in thick, smouldering ash, in pitch black.

  He lost 658 of his New York-based employees that day, including his brother and most of his closest friends. It was the single greatest loss by one firm in the atrocity.

  Lutnick admitted that as he stumbled away from the carnage, all he could think was: ‘I’m done. That’s it. There’s nothing left.’

  But then another instinct kicked in. Lutnick was orphaned, and never forgot how his extended family wasn’t there for him. ‘I wasn’t going to let that happen to these people,’ he told me.

  The challenge was extraordinary. His company had been decimated, and was losing $1 million a day. He had to stop all pay cheques to grieving widows, a decision that inspired fury from many of them.

  He burst into tears in an interview with Larry King, crying, ‘I don’t have any money to pay their salaries.’

  But what he did have was resolve. He announced that he would donate 25 per cent of all the profits Cantor Fitzgerald made over the next five years to the dependants of those who died, plus ten years of free health care.

  ‘Their immediate reaction was, “Twenty-five per cent of zero is zero, that’s no good to us.”’

  They underestimated Howard Lutnick.

  Lutnick has rebuilt Cantor Fitzgerald, literally from the ashes of Ground Zero, and it is now nearly twice as big as it was on 9/11.

  To date, the company has paid over $180 million to the families, way more than they could have ever hoped or dreamed of.

  The families that doubted him now adore him.

  The interview was without any doubt the most moving, emotional and inspiring I’ve ever done.

  By a strange coincidence, BBC1 aired the finale of the American version of the UK show Celebrity Apprentice this week, three years after it happened. Viewers will have seen a thickset balding guy in glasses make two sensational hundred-thousand-dollar bids in the charity auction to help me win Donald Trump’s competition, and raise money for the Intrepid Fallen Heroes Fund, which aids severely wounded American, and sometimes British, soldiers.

  I didn’t know the man personally. I’d just asked Sarah, Duchess of York, who was the most generous person she knew in America when I was trying to find high-roller bidders, and she hadn’t hesitated.

  ‘Oh, Howard Lutnick. He’s the most generous person in the world, never mind America.’

  WEDNESDAY, 14 SEPTEMBER 2011

  Tonight was the finale of America’s Got Talent, which was won by a brilliant young dreadlocked black Sinatra-style crooner called Landau Eugene Murphy Jr, who was homeless at nineteen and washed cars for a living.

  He’s a sublimely talented, charming and humble guy who perfectly personifies the ethos of this kind of show – someone with a true natural gift who’d never had the chance to realise his potential.

  Now he’ll headline in Las Vegas.

  I went to the wrap party afterwards, and everyone was asking me if I’d be back next season.

  The honest answer is that I don’t know.

  I’d like to be released from my contract, which still has another two years to run, but the show is one of NBC’s biggest hits and it’s entirely up to them.

  Simon Cowell knows how I feel, because I asked to be released last summer when I first got offered the CNN job.

  He agreed, because he knew how difficult it would be for me to juggle both shows, but NBC overruled him.

  Now the company has new management though, so it may be possible.

  FRIDAY, 16 SEPTEMBER 2011

  I’ve had shockingly awful food poisoning all week, prompting an equally severe sense of humour failure.

  Tonight I had rehydrating fluids dripped into my veins for an hour, then large amounts of blood sucked out by an Eastern European nurse.

  ‘Where are you from?’ I asked.

  ‘Transylvania.’

  ‘Ha – no, seriously.’

  She looked bemused.

  ‘I’m seriously from Transylvania.’

  SATURDAY, 17 SEPTEMBER 2011

  It’s Emmy Awards weekend in Hollywood.

  I’ve got zero interest in going to the event itself tomorrow.

  But wild horses wouldn’t have kept me away from attending film producer Jeffrey Katzenberg’s celebrated ‘Evening Before’ party tonight.

  The first person I saw was Hugh Laurie.

  ‘Ah, Hugh, how are you?’

  ‘I’m fine, thank you Morgan.’

  Laurie, star of the brilliant hospital drama House, usually gives one interview a year to a British newspaper or magazine in which he moans about everything in his glamorous Hollywood life: L.A., the weather, his workload, press intrusion – you name it, he whines about it.

  ‘Have you ever thought about doing an interview where you don’t sound like such an inherently miserable git?’ I asked.

  He laughed. ‘That’s true – I always do, don’t I?’

  ‘How about coming on my CNN show and being, well, happy?’ I suggested.

  ‘Let’s not get ahead of ourselves here, Morgan …’

  I walked on, and someone barged into me, sending my vodka and tonic flying.

  ‘Hey …’ I began to complain. Then realised it was Tom Cruise, dashing to the side of his wife, Katie Holmes.

  He’s as small, and extraordinarily youthful looking, as I’d imagined him to be.

  ‘Tom – Piers Morgan. Nice to meet you.’

  He smiled, shook my hand, said ‘Hello, Piers’ – then turned around to speak to someone else. My audience was over. I didn’t even get the chance to say I’d seen Top Gun at the cinema twelve times as a trainee reporter on the Wimbledon News.

  Fortunately, Katie stayed behind to chat. ‘I’d love to have you on my show,’ I said.

  ‘We’ll see,’ she replied.

  ‘That’s not a no,’ I noted. ‘But I would have to insist on one thing.’

  ‘Oh? What’s that?’

  ‘That under absolutely no circumstances are you allowed to bring him with you.’

  Katie’s eyes turned to where I was looking, and pointed at Tom.

  ‘Him?’

  ‘Him.’

  She giggled. ‘OK, understood.’

  MONDAY, 19 SEPTEMBER 2011
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  I conducted a fiery interview tonight with a journalist called Joe McGinniss, who’s written an explosive new book about Sarah Palin.

  One of his many lurid, and often unsubstantiated, claims is that Palin had a one-night stand with a black NBA basketball star called Glen Rice, supposedly contradicting other allegations that she was a racist in her younger days.

  But his evidence for this rests on a phone call he had with Rice, in which he didn’t ask him directly if they had sex, but skirted around the issue, before slyly saying, ‘So you never had the feeling she felt bad about having sex with a black guy?’ To which Rice answered, ‘No, no, no, nothing like that.’

  ‘He’s thinking about the racism part of the question, when you slip in the sex part,’ I suggested to McGinniss.

  ‘There’s nothing to slip in,’ he replied.

  ‘Well, that’s another question altogether,’ I said.

  McGinniss didn’t react.

  But my phone, sitting on my desk in front of me, did, with an instant email from Rod Stewart – watching live at his Beverly Hills mansion.

  ‘Dear Piers, “There’s nothing to slip in” went right over his head. Rod.’

  But not Rod’s, unsurprisingly.

  TUESDAY, 20 SEPTEMBER 2011

  I interviewed Morgan Freeman.

  He was startlingly, deliciously open and indiscreet.

  ‘I don’t think I’ve ever had an affair with an actress,’ he announced soon into the chat.

  ‘Why not?’

  ‘If I’m supposed to be in love with an actress, I don’t have to fall in love with her to play the part. I don’t think it’s a good idea.’

  ‘I always thought you were a natural ladies’ man in the sense that women really love you?’

  ‘I absolutely adore women. But I’m not a real big skirt-chaser. There’s a secret.’

  ‘What’s the secret?’

  ‘Don’t chase women, they’ll chase you. I’m going to get into trouble for saying this, but it works very well for me. You meet a lady, express how wonderful she looks and then go on about your business. They are curious. They’re like horses in a pasture. You walk into a pasture, and the horse sees you. He’s coming over to investigate. And if you see a lady and you don’t go drooling over her, she’s going to want to know why.’