Piers Morgan: Dealing With Repeat Failure, Death Threats & Regrets | E137

Morgan argues that society conflates normal emotional turbulence (stress, grief, breakups, exam pressure) with clinical mental illness. He believes this dilutes resources for those with serious conditions (e.g., clinical depression, suicidality) and undermines the cultural value of resilience and ‘mental strength’. His practical stance: encourage people to talk, but also teach them to ‘keep pounding’ and build perspective, rather than automatically medicalizing ordinary hardship.

Being bullied at a comprehensive school for his double-barrelled name and then ‘protected’ when his tougher brother arrived taught him about standing up to bullies and the role of force in some conflicts. Moving between a privileged prep school and a state comprehensive gave him comfort with both ‘snobs’ and ‘yobs’, which he credits with enabling him to feel equally at ease with “Nelson Mandela and the Queen” or his old village mates.

Morgan stresses ‘backing yourself’ (borrowing Kevin Pietersen’s mantra) and being willing to take shots, citing Wayne Gretzky’s line about missing 100% of the shots you don’t take. He views his career as a series of bets—some big wins, some public failures—but treats each ‘bedoing’ (major setback) as data and fuel, not a reason to retreat. For others, his model is: tolerate bollockings, learn from failures more than successes, and don’t obsessively protect a spotless record.

While he endorses the original ‘woke’ concern with racial and social justice, he argues contemporary wokism has become ‘a new form of fascism’ that dictates permissible jokes, opinions, and even vocabulary (e.g., meat terms for vegan products). He sees university no-platforming, retroactive punishment for old jokes, and the treatment of figures like J.K. Rowling and Sharon Osbourne as evidence that a small, vocal minority is overriding democratic norms of pluralism and debate.

Morgan and Bartlett discuss how algorithms and tribalism create echo chambers where people are rewarded for more extreme positions and punished for nuance. Morgan uses the vegan sausage roll saga as an example of how a trivial opinion can trigger a moralised pile-on, illustrating that on social platforms, deviation from the prevailing moral script (however minor) is treated as heresy.