‘Ted laughed his ass off.’
SUNDAY, 6 MAY 2012
Vice President Joe Biden today publicly backed gay marriage.
On NBC’s Meet the Press, he said: ‘I am absolutely comfortable with the fact that men marrying men, women marrying one another, and heterosexual men and women marrying one another are entitled to the exact same rights, all the civil rights, all the civil liberties.’
He called the debate surrounding the issue a simple question of ‘Who do you love? And will you be loyal to the person you love?’
Within minutes, Biden was being accused of dropping a huge gaffe, because he has said all this before the president has said it.
But I think he knew exactly what he was doing.
The VP was basically telling his boss to get on with it, and endorse gay marriage himself.
Good for him.
MONDAY, 7 MAY 2012
I interviewed Obama’s senior strategist David Axelrod tonight, and pressed him on when the president would endorse gay marriage.
He insisted that Obama and Biden were on the same page.
‘He believes that couples, heterosexual couples and gay couples, should have exactly the same legal rights.’
‘Right,’ I replied, ‘but is there an inconsistency between saying “I am supportive of all gay rights and gay equality” whilst not saying that you believe in gay marriage? Particularly when eight states have now legalised it.’
‘The whole country has gone through an evolution,’ he said, ‘and the president has gone through that as well. He is very much in accord with the rights of the states and the people in those states to do it. And he wants to make sure if people are legally married in those states that these marriages are recognised just as marriages between men and women are recognised.’
‘So why doesn’t he just go one step further and say he supports gay marriage?’
‘I’m not going to make news for the president here. He speaks very well for himself, Piers!’
WEDNESDAY, 9 MAY 2012
Well, that didn’t take long.
President Obama today endorsed gay marriage.
In an interview with Robin Roberts for ABC, he said: ‘I’ve concluded that for me personally it’s important for me to go ahead and affirm that I think same-sex couples should be able to get married.’
He revealed that his change of heart had come in part from prodding by gay friends, and by conversations with his wife and daughters.
‘I had hesitated on gay marriage in part because I thought civil unions would be sufficient,’ he said. ‘And I was sensitive to the fact that, for a lot of people, the word marriage was something that invokes very powerful traditions and religious beliefs.’
Yet, ironically, it was his own Christian beliefs that finally triggered his U-turn.
‘The thing at the root that we think about is not only Christ sacrificing himself on our behalf, but it’s also the golden rule – treat others the way you would want to be treated. I think that’s what we try and impart to our kids, and that’s what motivates me as president.’
It’s a big, bold, risky move by Obama, and I applaud him for it.
He knows gay marriage is a very divisive issue, but he also knows that he would never have become president if people before him hadn’t also taken big political risks on civil rights.
MONDAY, 14 MAY 2012
I’ve flown to Dallas to interview an array of American Olympic stars.
And today, I came face to face with the man who is on the verge of becoming officially the greatest Olympian of them all – swimming phenomenon Michael Phelps.
He needs just three medals in London to surpass former Soviet gymnast Larisa Latynina’s all-time record of eighteen Olympic medals.
And considering he won gold in all eight swimming events he competed in during the last Beijing games, this is almost a certainty.
Physically, he’s an extraordinary sight – six foot, four inches tall, but with a surprisingly skinny torso, especially his sticklike legs. Then you see these enormous size-fourteen feet, massive hands and quite startlingly long arms, giving him an 80-inch albatross-like wingspan.
Add double-jointed ankles, and you begin to understand why Phelps has been described as a ‘unique physical freak’.
He sat down and promptly delivered an enormous yawn.
‘Are you tired, or bored?’ I asked.
‘Maybe both …’ he smirked.
‘Do you enjoy doing interviews?’
‘It’s OK, if I’m not in a grumpy mood.’
‘Are you today?’
‘Not yet.’
He stared at me defiantly.
And I saw in that moment just why Michael Phelps is such a formidable competitor. He doesn’t even like losing at interviews.
But really, all you need to know about Michael Phelps is something he told me halfway through our encounter: ‘I once trained for five years without a break – 365 days a year, for at least four or five hours a day in the pool.’
‘Why would anyone do that?’ I said with a laugh.
‘Because I wanted to be the best there had ever been, and that’s what it takes.’
WEDNESDAY, 16 MAY 2012
It’s been a very slow few weeks for news, and our ratings have softened as a result to dangerously low levels.
It doesn’t help that May is a big ‘sweeps’ month for the TV networks, where they unleash all their big-gun finales to get high numbers they can use to ramp up advertising rates.
But nothing quite prepared me for the shock of what happened at 4.30 p.m. today.
I was sitting in my New York studio, about to start a taped interview with Billy Bob Thornton, when Jonathan emailed me last night’s ratings, as he always does around this time.
The overnight figure had looked worryingly low, but can often be misleading. Not this time.
The first thing I read was Jonathan’s comment: ‘No words.’
This was not a good sign.
My eyes raced down the figures for CNN prime time, and alighted on the 9 p.m. hour younger viewer demo number: ‘Thirty-nine.’
My whole body literally arched in shock.
It couldn’t be right.
That would be almost 50 per cent lower than any rating I’d had before.
It meant that just 39,000 people in that age range had watched my show last night. A complete and utter catastrophe.
The total viewer number, including all viewers, was 284,000. Another record low number in that category too.
Cold sweat appeared on the palms of my hands.
It made no sense. The show had been a regular one, no different from most nights. We’d started with good breaking news developments surrounding the Trayvon Martin case, and the investigation into disgraced senator John Edwards, plus exclusive interviews with Glee star Jane Lynch, and a homeless guy called Ted Williams with an extraordinary golden voice.
Oddly, the Lynch interview was the moment we plunged to our lowest rating, of just twenty-three in the demo. Meaning almost nobody at all was watching.
Later this afternoon we worked out why we may have had such a calamity – Glee had been extended to a special two-hour episode last night, meaning we had scheduled the Lynch interview to clash with her appearing in her own smash hit show on another channel.
Anyone who likes her, or Glee, would have been watching NBC, not CNN.
This was pure suicidal idiocy on our part, and one of us should have realised in advance.
Ken Jautz sent a supportive ‘Don’t jump, tomorrow’s another day’ email, which was good of him.
‘Thanks Ken,’ I replied. ‘I don’t know what the fuck is going on with these numbers but obviously we will be doing everything we can to get out of it as fast as possible. I can only apologise for last night. Horrific.’
I felt physically sick. Genuinely. I wanted to go to my office, lock the door and puke in the bin.
But I had to get through the Billy Bob Thornton interview fir
st, which I managed to do without displaying too much of the misery I was feeling inside.
Afterwards, I slunk back to my office, feeling utterly wretched.
Jonathan walked in, shut the door and sighed.
‘Every good show has brushes with death. Now we’ll see who our friends are!’
‘We could get cancelled for this,’ I replied.
‘That’s not going to happen. This was unique; the ratings will bounce back tomorrow. We were up against three big reality show finales last night, and we fucked up the Glee thing.’
I finished the rest of tonight’s show, and went home in a semi-daze. The media critics and bloggers have been brutal about the ratings – even the news aggregation website the Drudge Report screamed ‘LOWEST EVER RATINGS FOR PIERS MORGAN!’ on its home page.
This was picked up on Twitter, and I was gleefully abused by all and sundry.
Around midnight, after I’d sunk a bottle of wine, Jonathan emailed: ‘Cock of walk or feather duster?’
‘Feel pretty dustery, have to be honest,’ I replied. ‘Brutal reaction everywhere.’
‘Get some sleep, we’ll get ’em tomorrow.’
THURSDAY, 17 MAY 2012
Woke at 5 a.m., feeling hungover and exhausted from the sheer mental anguish of that thirty-nine demo number.
The internet was full of more vitriol in my direction, mostly along the lines of ‘When will CNN fire this clown?’
It’s been particularly vicious back in Britain, where many of my old media ‘friends’ would like nothing better than seeing me fall flat on my face again.
Unfortunately, I’m flying to London tonight to spend a week taping my Life Stories show. Perfectly awful timing.
As I was driven to JFK, Jonathan sent me last night’s ratings, which were three times higher than Tuesday’s.
Nobody back home will see or care about this recovery, as they continue to delight in the horror of that record low number.
FRIDAY, 18 MAY 2012
Jonathan sent me the ratings for last night, which showed we did a 175 in the demo, over four times the disastrous thirty-nine, and comfortably the highest on CNN all day and night.
We had bounced back strongly.
Jesus, what a scary week.
* * *
fn1 Bo Derek later denied any romance with Ted Turner.
Bill Clinton, the world’s greatest politician.
CHAPTER 8
WEDNESDAY, 23 MAY 2012
CNN has announced that I will be anchoring the network’s coverage of Queen Elizabeth’s Diamond Jubilee, marking the sixtieth anniversary of her accession to the throne.
I’ve had quite a ride with the royals over the years.
‘Ah,’ said Princess Diana, the first time we met. ‘The man who thinks he knows me so well.’
I always chuckle when I remember that encounter.
Because it said it all, didn’t it?
The royal family is the most discussed, debated, adored and derided collection of relatives in the world – yet how well do we really know any of them?
I’ve met most of them at some stage, and am still none the wiser, although my own first-hand experiences suggest the caricatures are not a million miles off the truth.
Prince Philip was quite splendidly rude at a Buckingham Palace reception to mark his son Charles’s fiftieth birthday in 1998 – refusing to utter a single word when I introduced myself as the editor of the Daily Mirror, and snarling to a friend of mine as he shot off, ‘God, you can’t tell from the outside, can you?’
I loved him for his brutal honesty.
Charles himself oozed ostentatious charm and politeness that day, as he always does in public. Say what you like about the man – I think he’ll make a brilliant king – he has extraordinarily good manners.
Camilla’s warm, earthy and funny. A minute spent in her company and you instantly understand why she was so much better suited to Charles than Diana.
Andrew, Edward and Anne, by contrast, were stiff, formal and … well, how can I put this gently … a tad on the dull side.
Harry, I’ve never met. Which is probably best for both of us given that he once asked my friend Amanda Holden: ‘Is Piers Morgan as big a prat in real life as he seems on TV?’
William, I know better. I once had a quite extraordinary lunch with just him and Diana at Kensington Palace, when he was thirteen years old, wearing braces on his teeth and heading into the perils of royal adulthood.
We discussed everything from Cindy Crawford and James Hewitt to paparazzi and kissing girls in discos. All of it agonisingly off the record.
But I thought then that William had a much older head on his shoulders than his age dictated. And I still do. He’s a man who grew up to loathe the press for the way they harassed his mother and despised them even more after she died. Yet he understands his ‘duty’ and the need to engage the media in his life to fulfil that duty properly.
William has a sharp sense of humour. I once ribbed him about the size of his feet and he smacked me in the stomach crying, ‘What about the size of your six-pack … or should I say keg?’
My brother-in-law Patrick, a former army colonel, trained both princes at Sandhurst, and said they were both terrific soldiers. He also said that neither of them ever made any attempt to be treated any differently to other cadets. ‘They just mucked in like the others.’
As for Diana – she was a beautiful, complicated woman who struggled endlessly with the intolerable pressure of being the biggest celebrity on planet Earth. She was great company, as mischievous and provocative as she could be, serious, fiery and contrary. We all miss her, whether we loved her (as I did) or not.
But the biggest star of them all in the royal firmament is the queen. She always has been. And what a magnificent queen she is.
I’ve met her three times.
She is smaller than you think, always perfectly groomed, and deploys that famous fixed grin to cover myriad emotions. But don’t be fooled by that benign appearance. Beneath the smile lurks a formidably sharp brain and a waspish sense of humour.
‘Do you enjoy hosting your garden parties?’ I once asked her at a Windsor Castle party thrown for the British media in 2002 – as we looked out over the magnificently tended green lawns.
‘Well, Mr Morgan,’ she replied, ‘let me put it this way: How would you like twelve thousand complete strangers trampling on your lawn?’
I’ve only seen the queen rattled on one other occasion, and that was in the days after the death of Princess Diana.
The royals remained at Balmoral in Scotland as the nation descended into grief, and Her Majesty was personally attacked for the first time anyone could remember for refusing to lower the flag at Buckingham Palace and for making no personal address to the nation.
I spoke to one of her press chiefs at the time, and he said she was like the proverbial deer trapped in headlights – unable to rid herself of the rigid formality the royals had always been taught to practise in such times of crisis and personal grief.
I remember approving the headline on the Daily Mirror front page: ‘Speak to Us, Ma’am, Your People Are Suffering.’ It may seem impertinent now, but in the moment it accurately reflected the mood of the country.
The next morning, the queen came back to London, lowered the flag and spoke to the nation on TV without her famous tiara.
She spoke ‘as your queen and as a grandmother’ and made one of the greatest speeches I’ve ever heard – sincere, eloquent, moving and direct.
The mood changed instantly, from anger to respect and affection.
And there, right there, I understood the primary purpose of the queen – to console, celebrate, encourage and stabilise Britain.
The ongoing debate of why taxpayers should pay for the royals has always struck me as utterly fatuous – they more than pay for themselves with the incredible tourism they attract. In America alone, millions of people see them as almost their own royal family – such is the deep-rooted affecti
on I encounter for them on my travels around the US.
But if you ask me what the queen’s most important ‘point’ is, I would say it’s the weekly meeting she has with her prime minister.
I spoke to three of them – Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair and Gordon Brown – about those encounters. All attested to her extraordinary wisdom, based on unparalleled experience of world affairs. The queen, after all, has met every leader for the last sixty years and surveyed every world crisis in that time.
‘There was no problem I encountered that she hadn’t seen before, in some form,’ Blair told me once. ‘I found that very comforting.’
‘She’s so intelligent,’ agreed Brown, ‘and never hesitated to challenge me about something if she didn’t agree.’
‘I trusted her instincts better than almost anyone else’s,’ said Thatcher.
I suspect a lot more British government policy is decided over a cup of tea in those meetings than in any cabinet meeting.
In 1992, during the making of an official royal documentary about her life entitled Elizabeth R, she told the director: ‘One feels the buck stops here, so to speak. I had a letter this morning. It said: “I’ve been going round and round in circles but you are the only person who can stop the circle.” I thought that was rather nice.’
In the end, the buck does indeed stop with her. And she stops a multitude of circles on a daily basis.
And for that, I remain her grateful, if occasionally disobedient, servant.
SUNDAY, 3 JUNE 2012
I’ve been very excited about co-anchoring CNN’s coverage of the Diamond Jubilee from London.
But I arrived at Tower Bridge this morning – our location for the thousand-boat river pageant – to find a slight problem. My co-anchor, Brooke Baldwin, ate a dodgy oyster last night and is suffering from wretched food poisoning.
I went to see her in one of our makeshift tents, and found poor Brooke sitting in a chair, eating a small cracker and looking deathly pale.
‘You OK?’
‘I’ll be fine,’ she groaned.
I could see she was about to be sick again.
Shooting Straight: Guns, Gays, God, and George Clooney Page 20