Piers Morgan - Snowflake Out Of Time

For those in the media establishment who have made a career out of being the one who sits in judgment on others, even people unable to defend themselves against those in possession of the larger megaphone, it all looks so different when the boot is so firmly on the other foot. So it was in a particularly ill-tempered edition of ITV breakfast offering Good Morning Britain today, for former Screws and Daily Mirror editor Piers Morgan.

And what's more, Ron

Right from the 0630 hours start, the atmosphere on set was bad: perhaps those forced to share the GMB stage with Morgan knew that he would be going off on one as part of his obsession with the Duchess of Sussex. Maybe they saw his appearance yesterday on Fox News Channel (fair and balanced my arse) when he made an untrue and particularly unpleasant claim about Megs. Was he going to carry on in the same vein?

Morgan opened with an unnecessary slice of rank misogyny, singling out Charlotte Hawkins because her dress had a hemline above the knee. It wasn’t quite as toe-curling as Norman Vaughan leering at Anne Aston on an edition of 1970s game show The Golden Shot (ask an older relative), but it was bad. Then Morgan was clearly reluctant to throw to fellow presenter Alex Beresford. We did not have to wait long to find out why.

Once Beresford had the floor, he talked Haz and Megs, and called out Morgan. “They have had an overwhelming amount of negative press … There was bad press around the engagement, before the engagement and everything that has followed since has been incredibly damaging, quite clearly to Meghan’s mental health”. There was more.

“I hear Piers say that William has gone through the same thing, but … siblings experience tragedy in their life … one will be absolutely fine and brush it off, and the other will not be able to deal with it so strongly, and that is clearly what has happened with Prince Harry”.

And more. “He walked behind his mother’s coffin, at a tender, tender age in front of … the globe. That is going to shape a young boy for the rest of his life. So I think that we all need to take a step back. I understand that you [Morgan] don’t like Meghan Markle, you’ve made it so clear a number of times on this programme, a number of times, and I understand that you’ve got a personal relationship with Meghan”. He wasn’t finished.

“Or had one, and she cut you off. She’s entitled to cut you off if she wants to. Has she said anything about you since she cut you off? I don’t think she has, but you continue to trash her”. At this point Morgan blew a gasket and stormed off the set. Beresford continued “Absolutely diabolical behaviour … I’m sorry, but Piers spouts off on a regular basis and we all have to sit there and listen. 0630 to 0700 yesterday was incredibly hard to watch”.

Morgan returned and whined at Beresford. But perhaps he should also be paying attention to mental health charity Mind, which put out this press release via Twitter: “We were disappointed and concerned to see Piers Morgan’s comments on not believing Meghan’s experiences about suicidal thoughts today … we are in conversations with ITV about this at the moment”. Having to say sorry on air, perhaps? That’s really going to hurt.

ITV are having to make an awful lot of allowances for their star host right now, even to the point of offending their sponsors. Is it really worth it just to keep the press off their backs? Or is Morgan about to jump ship? Either way, today was not GMB’s finest hour.

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