I tried, unsuccessfully, to get our senior politicians to do this for years, after experiencing both fee-paying and state education. At my fee-paying school, I played sport every day. At my comprehensive, once a week if I was lucky.
As any social worker or policeman will affirm, fit, competitive, occupied kids don’t feel the same burning need to binge-drink, take drugs, impregnate underage girls or loot, shoot and stab things.
Make them proud of their country – get schools singing the National Anthem in assembly each day, too – and explain to them that if someone like Mo Farah can come over here, penniless and helpless, from war-torn Somalia as an eight-year-old boy, and turn himself into the greatest athlete we’ve ever had, then so can they.
The Diamond Jubilee, and the Olympics, have shown the world what Britain’s really made of. Let’s make the most of it.
MONDAY, 20 AUGUST 2012
A Republican congressman in America called Todd Akin has caused outrage by claiming women can’t get pregnant from ‘legitimate rape’ because their bodies instinctively repel against the attacker.
We booked him to appear on my show tonight, but his representative pulled him out at the last minute, citing ‘scheduling issues’.
So we replaced him with an empty chair, and I explained it to viewers by saying: ‘We booked Congressman Akin to tell his story himself. We kept our word. I’m here. But Rex Elsass, who’s the political consultant to Congressman Akin, did not keep his. He pulled the interview at the last possible moment, having agreed to it on his behalf, leaving us and you looking at an empty chair. It’s a very nice empty chair but it remains an empty chair. Why would he say yes, then no? We can only speculate.
‘Congressman, you have an open invitation to join me in that chair whenever you feel up to it. Because if you don’t keep your promise to appear on the show, then you are what we would call in Britain a gutless little twerp.’
Within minutes, both ‘twerp’ and ‘empty chair’ were trending on Twitter.
TUESDAY, 21 AUGUST 2012
Prince Harry has been caught partying naked with a vast coterie of young ladies in his Las Vegas hotel suite, sparking an absurd new ‘privacy’ debate.
Hard to feel that sorry for him.
If you’re one of the senior heirs to the British throne, and you invite fifteen complete strangers to play nude billiards with you in your Vegas suite, then I think it’s fair to say your expectation of privacy should be about the same as if you perform a moonie on the roof of Buckingham Palace – which Harry probably has done at some point in his life.
WEDNESDAY, 22 AUGUST 2012
I’ve interviewed a lot of big, tough men, but few have looked more capable of handling themselves than the rapper LL Cool J.
He’s a thoroughly nice chap, but built like the Hoover Dam and famously honed his fighting skills on the mean streets of Queens in New York.
In the early hours of this morning, he was the victim of a burglary at his L.A. home while his wife and children slept upstairs.
Well, when I say ‘victim’, the police report made me laugh out loud:
‘Mr Smith [LL’s real name is James Smith],’ it read, ‘confronted the intruder in his kitchen. The intruder, Jonathan Kirby, suffered a broken nose, jaw and ribs. Mr Smith was uninjured.’
THURSDAY, 30 AUGUST 2012
I’m at the Republican national convention in Tampa, Florida, and was doing a live hit with Wolf Blitzer inside the convention centre this afternoon when the formal presentation of the colours began on stage behind us, to be followed by the Pledge of Allegiance and ‘Star-Spangled Banner’.
Everyone began to stand up, but we were both strapped into our chairs with microphones.
I wasn’t entirely sure what the protocol was in this situation, so waited for Wolf to take the lead, as he was bound to know.
But confusion reigned.
‘Do we stand?’ Wolf asked the control room. ‘Because we need to disconnect all our mics if we stand.’
As we sat there, slightly trapped, people looking down from the seats above us began loudly heckling.
‘Stand up Wolf and Piers! Show some respect! Shame on CNN!’
This was getting very awkward, especially when the band began playing the ‘Star-Spangled Banner’.
The protests grew significantly louder, and nastier.
‘Wolf, we’ve got to stand now …’ I whispered.
‘I know, let’s just do it.’
We ripped off our mics and stood up, by which time the anthem had already been playing for around twenty seconds.
A YouTube clip appeared later, showing the whole thing as it happened.
Not our finest moment. But not even the most awkward microphone-related moment of my day, as it transpired.
Each night at the convention, I’ve been anchoring a live show at midnight from The Grill, a rather fancy makeshift bar that CNN set up in a tent. Tonight, all my worst fears about broadcasting live from a bar came to fruition.
The plan was for me to interview a few guests at the top of the show from one area, then get up and walk to the bar itself, and interview a few more there.
Unfortunately, I’d forgotten that I was strapped into my chair with various microphone wires and cables. With the cameras still on me, I broke out of the chair, and disconnected the link between me and the control room in New York.
To compound the problem, we then suffered a second catastrophic technical breakdown, meaning we lost every camera apart from one, sitting on the shoulder of a guy walking with me.
This, in broadcasting terms, is like walking naked around Times Square. It feels good for about five seconds, then you realise you’re on your own, and exposed as you’ve never been before …
I walked to the bar, sat at a table and winged it reasonably successfully with my guest, Jon Voight, for the next ten minutes as our engineers raced to resolve the problem.
Finally, Jonathan burst back into my ear, shrieking like a banshee (his decibel levels in the control room during live shows have been known to rattle windows in New Jersey).
‘PIERS! PIERS! Can you hear me?’
‘Unfortunately, I can now, yes …’ I replied calmly.
‘Thank fuck!’ he wailed.
‘Actually, I found that all quite liberating,’ I said, and laughed. ‘Maybe we should cut out the middle man and do that every night …’
‘Yeah, and maybe I should find an anchor who doesn’t forget he’s strapped into a chair!’
FRIDAY, 31 AUGUST 2012
Clint Eastwood was booked by Mitt Romney’s team to make a brief five-minute warm-up last night to the party faithful before the nominee’s big speech.
Instead, he rambled on for eleven minutes, most of the time interviewing an empty chair – pretending it was Barack Obama.
The whole thing was excruciating. Like watching a mad uncle make an impromptu train-wreck ‘tribute’ to the bride at a wedding.
But it was still flattering to see Clint steal one of my ideas.
‘What did we learn tonight?’ someone tweeted. ‘That Piers Morgan is much better at talking to an empty chair than Clint Eastwood.’
WEDNESDAY, 5 SEPTEMBER 2012
One of the more self-defeatingly inexplicable laws in America is the Twenty-second Amendment that states no American president can serve more than two terms in office.
This meant that Bill Clinton, for me the best US president in my lifetime, had to give up the reins at the peak of his powers.
He remains an extraordinary political force though, as he showed tonight at the Democratic convention with a speech so rich in oratory, charm and bite that it had the rare effect of reducing the media to the same fawning, simpering, cheering ranks of the audience.
Clinton brilliantly articulated the best argument for why Barack Obama should be re-elected – despite America’s continued economic woes and chronic unemployment – and did so way more effectively than Obama himself has done throughout the campaign so far.
As the audience roared, he continued:
‘I love our country so much. People have predicted our demise ever since George Washington was criticised for being a mediocre surveyor with a bad set of wooden false teeth. And so far, every single person that’s bet against America has lost money because we always come back. We decide to champion the cause for which our founders pledged their lives, their fortunes, their sacred honour – the cause of forming a more perfect union.’
His voice rising to new heights of power and emotion, he then virtually yelled: ‘My fellow Americans, if that is what you want, if that is what you believe, you must vote and you must re-elect President Barack Obama.’
On cue, Obama walked on stage and the two men hugged.
They’re never going to be best buddies, but they both need each other.
SUNDAY, 9 SEPTEMBER 2012
Tonight, I was watching the Paralympics closing ceremony in London on TV when Rihanna suddenly bounced up on stage sporting a weirdly unflattering new short-cropped elfin hairstyle.
Before I could stop myself, I tweeted: ‘Rihanna needs to grow her hair back. Fast.’
As soon as she came off stage, she retweeted my comment with the simple yet devastating observation: ‘grow a dick … fast!’
‘Is this a good time to ask for an interview?’ I replied.
‘Haaaaa!’ shot back Rihanna. ‘Only if it’s not about cosmetics! But phuck yea let’s do it!’
Booked, however incredibly.
WEDNESDAY, 19 SEPTEMBER 2012
I’ve now completed six hundred shows at CNN, which leaves me a mere six thousand four hundred behind Larry King (gulp …). In that time, I’ve had one person walk out on me, Republican politician Christine O’Donnell, and one not turn up at all, Republican politician Todd Akin – whom we replaced with an empty chair.
What I’ve never had, until tonight, is someone turn up and then walk out before the interview even starts.
The culprit was Frasier TV legend Kelsey Grammer.
What made it so bizarre was that I interviewed him last year and we got on so well; and he greeted me backstage tonight with a cheery smile and the words: ‘I returned because I liked the last interview so much!’
We exchanged further pleasantries (he also became a father to a baby girl recently) before I walked into my studio and began the first half of the live show, which featured US presidential election coverage.
Then, after twenty minutes or so, Jonathan uttered the immortal words: ‘Kelsey has left the building.’
Given that Mr Grammer was supposed to be the second half of the show, and we had no plan B, this was a rather unsettling turn of events.
‘Is he coming back?’ I whispered frantically.
‘We don’t think so.’
It transpired that he’d been standing in the green room a few minutes before 9 p.m., and saw a rehearsal on the monitor of a pre-taped opening to the show. It featured a tease for his interview, including a photo (one of five we used in the tease) of him with his ex-wife, Camille.
They’ve been through a bitter, very public divorce recently, but Kelsey had told our producers he was quite happy to answer questions about her.
Apparently this generosity didn’t extend to a picture of her too.
‘I want that picture removed,’ he demanded.
But it was literally too late to do it before we went on air.
The moment Kelsey saw Camille’s photo flash up on screen at the top of the show, he began ranting and raving at my staff in an astonishingly rude manner. Then he left.
I decided the only thing to do was inform the viewers of what had happened.
‘Kelsey Grammer was due to be on by now,’ I said, ‘but he appears to have left the building. We’re not quite sure what’s going on.
‘He was here. I spoke to him. And he was happily looking forward to coming on. But he has exited stage left. So we have half an hour left. He may or may not come back. We shall see.’
Fortunately, I had two smart, adaptable guests in journalists Nick Kristof and Larry Kudlow with me. In the next commercial break, I asked them: ‘Could you possibly stick around, chaps?’
To my huge relief, they both said yes.
Kelsey never returned.
I came off set absolutely steaming. And grew even angrier when I learned just how rude he’d been to the team.
But that anger turned to incandescence when Stan Rosenfield, his publicist, and someone who’s always been a good friend to the show, put out a statement saying: ‘Piers needs to take responsibility for what he did to Kelsey. It’s called accountability.’
SUNDAY, 23 SEPTEMBER 2012
The world’s leaders are all gathering in New York this week for two of the biggest political events of the year – the United Nations General Assembly and the Clinton Global Initiative.
None will attract more interest than the president of Iran, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – a man who inspires more fear and loathing in America than anyone else since the deaths of Saddam, Gaddafi and bin Laden.
This morning, thanks to the persistence of one of my bookers, Lisa Thompson, I landed his first major TV interview in America in a year.
Security around his hotel, the Warwick in midtown Manhattan, was insane.
Once inside, I sat waiting for half an hour as his staff finalised their boss’s interview requirements.
His three main ones were: 1) the air-conditioning was to be turned off; 2) the lighting on his face was to be softened; and 3) most amusingly, the gold-shaded doorknobs on the cupboard in the backdrop of the set were to be removed as they were ‘too flashy’.
Then, around 11 a.m., his vast entourage of at least forty people suddenly swept in and there, in the middle, was the president himself.
Ahmadinejad is a small, wiry, dark-eyed man.
He shook my hand with a beaming grin, and made a peace sign with his hands.
Certainly no fool – he’s a scholar – he’s a skilled political operator whose trick in interviews (from ones I had watched) is to avoid giving any direct answers to direct questions, and to keep talking for as long as you let him, eating up as much airtime as possible.
Like most despots, he’s a weird mixture of charm, ruthlessness, outrageous opinions and a very sinister stare.
It’s not easy interviewing him because he claims not to speak English, so your questions are translated and his replies are then translated back into your earpiece.
This gives him plenty of time to plan answers, of course. And I suspect his English is perfectly adequate for Western interviews if he wanted it to be.
‘Mr President,’ I began, ‘welcome to New York. Many Americans see you as public enemy number one. How do you feel about that?’
He replied in Farsi, and I waited at least a minute for the translator to repeat it in English.
‘The Creator, the Almighty, and most gracious and the most merciful, good morning to you. I wish to greet all of the wonderful people of the United States and all of the people who will see your programme. At the end of the day, if you do have personal animosity towards me, don’t transfer that on to the rest of the people of the United States. We love the people of the United States and they also wish in return peace and stability for all of the world.’
Hilarious!
After discussing the Arab Spring uprisings, the revolt in Syria, and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, I turned to his infamous quote that he wants Israel ‘wiped off the face of the map’.
‘There have been many different interpretations of what you said. You have disputed the meaning that was then translated from the original Farsi. Let me give you this opportunity to say exactly what you did say, and to say exactly what you did mean.’
He smiled and made a short speech that didn’t even allude to th
e question I’d asked.
‘The question wasn’t any of that,’ I persisted. ‘The question was do you believe that Israel should—’
‘I will get to that answer. Don’t be in such a hurry.’
‘Should Israel be wiped off the face of the map? Is that your desire?’
‘If a group comes and occupies the United States of America, destroys homes while women and children are in those homes, incarcerates the youth of America, imposes five different wars on many neighbours, and always threaten others, what would you do?’ he replied. ‘What would you say? Would you help it? Would you help that entity? Or would you help the people of the United States? So when we say “to be wiped”, we say for occupation to be wiped off from this world, for war-seeking to be wiped off and eradicated, the killing of women and children to be eradicated. And we propose the way. We propose the path. The path is to recognise the right of the Palestinians to self-governance. Allow the people of Palestine to make decisions regarding their own future. Imagine one day in Palestine there is no longer occupation, occupation no longer exists in Palestine.’
No denial of that original quote, I mentally noted.
Next, I pressed him on his persistent intimations that the Holocaust never took place.
‘Do you believe that the Holocaust happened?’
‘The historic events that you speak of, I have two questions. I’ve had two questions for quite some time, never received an answer to either one. Everywhere they allow a certain amount of research, of looking into historical events. Whenever there are obstacles placed on this path, then a question mark or two will arise. Why such obstacles?’
‘What are the questions that you have about the Holocaust?’ I asked.
‘Why in Europe has it been forbidden for anyone to conduct any research about this event? Why are researchers in prison?’
‘There has been extensive research into the Holocaust. It is indisputable that over six million Jews were annihilated by Adolf Hitler and the Nazis. The question is do you dispute that six million Jews were killed?’
‘Do you believe in the freedom of thought and ideas, or no?’
‘I believe in facts.’
‘And the freedom of research, do you believe in that and allow that, or no?’
Shooting Straight: Guns, Gays, God, and George Clooney Page 24
