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

Steven Bartlett 0:00 Could you do me a quick favor if you're listening to this? Please hit the Follow or Subscribe button. It helps more than you know, and we invite subscribers in every month to watch the show in person.

Piers Morgan 0:07 Opinions, to me, are the spice of life. If you don't have an opinion, there's something wrong with you. I'm Piers Morgan Uncensored. Show some damn respect. Why do you want to deport me? Am I allowed to respond yet? I'm a news junkie, and it started when I was six or seven. And then, as I got through my teens, I became very opinionated. I read a report last year that said 33 million people in Britain are mentally ill. No, they're not. It's crap. We're spending too much time encouraging a kind of wallowing in self-pity.

Steven Bartlett 0:34 People will misunderstand the use of the word.

Piers Morgan 0:36 Yeah, but hang on, hang on.

Steven Bartlett 0:37 The risk I see is being the judge of whether someone's feelings are worthy of the emotion.

Piers Morgan 0:43 I'm done with this. I left on a point of principle, and the principle was, I'm entitled to my opinion. Why should my sons be exposed to death threats simply for being my children? Cancel culture's a virus as deadly over time as the coronavirus. The public wants someone to cancel cancel culture. I want to stimulate debate and to get to some kind of truth.

Steven Bartlett 1:03 Have you ever regretted anything you've said? So without further ado, I'm Steven Bartlett, and this is The Diary of a CEO: USA Edition. I hope nobody's listening, but if you are, then please keep this to yourself. (instrumental music) Piers.

Piers Morgan 1:25 Steven. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 1:26 This is quite, quite interesting. You're usually on the, uh, the other side of the table.

Piers Morgan 1:29 I already feel uncomfortable.

Steven Bartlett 1:31 (laughs)

Piers Morgan 1:31 I've, I've watched your stuff. You're, you're forensic. You know, you go deep, and I'm like, "I don't know."

Steven Bartlett 1:36 (laughs)

Piers Morgan 1:36 I don't really know why I'm doing it, other than at least one of my sons is a massive fan of yours and said, "Daddy, you gotta do this podcast. Everyone listens to this podcast. So whatever you're doing, it's working, so I'm here."

Steven Bartlett 1:47 Mm-hmm. You make great kids. Well, thank you for being here.

Steven Bartlett 1:49 Um, the th- the thing ... I was think, sat up just thinking, where do I start with this conversation? And honestly, the, the, the p- the center point of my curiosity is how you came to be the person you are today. And I looked through your story, especially your early years-

Piers Morgan 2:02 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 2:02 ... the loss of your father, c- certain experiences you've had when you were younger. You're a self-aware guy. You're an honest man. What are the factors at that pre-teen age that went into making Piers Morgan the man that we all know as this media anomaly?

Piers Morgan 2:17 I'm a junkie. I'm a news junkie, and it started when I was six or seven, which is just weird. I've had four kids myself. The idea of being six or seven and being addicted to what's happening in the world, to news, to newspapers. I used to sit and read the Daily Mail. My parents used to get the mail. I used to read it from cover to cover when I was six or seven. So from a very early age, I had that kind of fascination and curiosity with what was happening, and I wanted to know what was happening and what to think about it. And then, as I got through my teens, I became very opinionated, and I used to regularly get thrown out of my local pub on a Saturday night for getting drunk and disorderly. Disorderly, they meant just too opinionated and too loud, so I'd argue with people, and then it would get out of hand, and then I'd be thrown out. I always got myself back in, but-

Steven Bartlett 2:59 Why? Why would you argue with people?

Piers Morgan 3:01 Uh, 'cause I used to feel strongly about stuff. You know, people see me hyperventilating about vegan sausage rolls and think, "How can any sensible human being in the world get so enraged by a vegan sausage roll?" I don't know, except that when I was young, I used to get enraged by all sorts of things. Now, not to the point where I'd hit people or, you know, manifest itself in any sort of violence, but I would be passionate about arguing, and most of my family are the same. My grandmother was very opinionated. My mom's very opinionated. My siblings, I'm the, probably the quietest one of the three of us when we go out, or four of us. Um, so opinions, to me, are the spice of life. If you don't have an opinion, there's something wrong with you, to me. You've gotta care about what's happening in the world, and you've gotta work out what you think about it. And I particularly think it's important now, when there's so much opinion flying around, that people go to the right people so that they hear the right kind (laughs) of stuff because-

Steven Bartlett 3:54 Mm-hmm.

Piers Morgan 3:55 ... there's so much nonsense being spewed into the sort of Twittersphere and so on, and Facebook, that ... That's why I think your show is so successful, your podcast, 'cause people appreciate the more reasonable take that you have on things, and the way you try and get to the truth about people and about things.

Steven Bartlett 4:12 Mm-hmm. So, but y- there's, there's, on one hand, um, loving to have a discussion and to have your opinion be heard and, and to convey information, and then there's this other part which I tried to understand which was, you repeatedly said, even at 16 and 17 years old, that you liked being the center of attention.

Piers Morgan 4:29 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 4:30 So I'm like, where does ... 'Cause that feels like more of a psychological thing. A lot of people don't like being the center of attention.

Piers Morgan 4:34 I just wanted to be famous. I used to practice my autograph when I was a kid.

Steven Bartlett 4:37 Interesting. Why?

Piers Morgan 4:37 Regularly. I wanted to be famous. I used to collect autographs. So I was a massive cricket fan in particular. Me and my brother used to go and stand outside pavilions at professional games and wait for players to come out and get Ian Botham's autograph, Viv Richards' autograph.

Steven Bartlett 4:51 Mm-hmm.

Piers Morgan 4:51 And I used to practice mine. Then I began writing to world leaders. I've got all these letters from like Margaret Thatcher and Ted Heath when he was prime minister and world leaders around the world. I've got letters from Sir Donald Bradman, you know, a, a whole shaft on the greatest cricketer that ever lived. I used to just write to him, and he used to write back. So I used to spend my entire time in weird correspondence with the world's most famous people and quietly thinking to myself, "I'd love to be one of these people. Must be great. Center of attention, everyone looking at you, talking about you, good, bad and ugly." So yeah, I mean, there are, there are bits of paper at home that my moms kept with just endless best wishes. Piers Morgan (laughs) best wishes. I mean, it sounds ludicrous and extremely vain and presumptuous of me, but now I'm at the stage where ... Ironically, I've got to a stage where if, in the old days, I had this level of recognition, I'd be signing autographs all the time.

Steven Bartlett 5:41 (laughs)

Piers Morgan 5:41 But nobody wants autographs anymore. Everyone wants a selfie. (laughs) So when I finally got there-

Steven Bartlett 5:46 Yeah.

Piers Morgan 5:47 ... actually autographing gone out of fashion. It's now selfie time.

Steven Bartlett 5:49 You're, you're very, you're very honest about that. A lot of people wouldn't s- I don't think ... I c- I think 99% of my guests would not have the whatever to say, "I wanted to be famous."

Piers Morgan 5:57 No, and by the way, most of them are lying.

Steven Bartlett 5:58 Yeah.

Piers Morgan 5:59 Right? So I o- I like to think that whether you love me or hate me, I do have a kind of brutal honesty about what I've set out to achieve, what I have achieved, what I failed at. I don't try and sugarcoat things.... nor do I try and pretend I'm something I'm not. You know, you don't have to like me to respect the fact, I think, that I speak my mind, I give honest opinions about stuff. They're not always opinions people agree with, but I want them to be. I don't want people to agree with me necessarily. I wanna stimulate debate and to get if- hopefully get to some kind of truth, which is the most important thing in- in a world where truth is so difficult to find.

Steven Bartlett 6:32 I also wanted to be famous. And I've only really realized this in hindsight, that I definitely wanted to be famous. Not for the wrong reasons, but I think the reason I wanted to be famous is because it was the antithesis, it was the opposite of what I was sometimes when I was younger.

Piers Morgan 6:45 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 6:46 When you're a kid trying to fit in on the playground, only Black kid at an all-white school, people calling me the N-word-

Piers Morgan 6:50 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 6:51 ... relaxing my hair to- to try and be white like my friends were. And I think I thought fame as acceptance on a mass scale, so I thought, "Oh," and admiration, so I thought that's what I wanted. When I read about you going to that comprehensive school, uh, you were also subjected to quite a rough treatment.

Piers Morgan 7:07 Yeah, well, my full name is Piers Stephon Pugh Morgan. It's a double-barreled surname. Uh, imagine having that name when you go to a local comp. So, you know, on day one, I had the local skinhead who had a Mohican come up and I think smacked me in the face, and that carried on for quite a while. In fact, it carried on, people doing that kind of thing, until my brother, Jeremy, who's now a British Army colonel, joined the school, and he was like the old thing of Mike Tyson. You know, everyone's got a plan till they get punched in the face. Everyone had a plan about me, uh, until my brother joined and punched him in the face. (laughs) So I realized then that force sometimes is not a bad thing, that when you're subjected to bullies, actually there's only one language most of them understand. I feel that, a- as I did about the playground at the time, and I feel, uh, about Vladimir Putin now and what's going on in Ukraine. It's the same principle. When someone's bullying, you either show them fear and weakness, or you stand up to them.

Steven Bartlett 7:57 Did you like school, even though you were bullied?

Piers Morgan 7:58 Yeah, I loved it. I loved it. I went to a prep school till I was 13, so I had a lot of privilege at the prep school, you know, played sport every day, great academic, uh, levels and so on. I then went to the local comprehensive, which was a great school, great, very successful comprehensive, but suddenly you were playing sport once a week.

Steven Bartlett 8:16 Mm.

Piers Morgan 8:16 I realized then the massive gulf between facilities and resource at a comprehensive compared to a fee-paying prep school, and how that was- seemed so unfair to me. Uh, but I also discovered the people, they had chips on their shoulders in both environments. You've got the snobs at the prep school, and you've got the yobs at the comprehensive. Most people were fine at both, but you got those two types-

Steven Bartlett 8:39 Mm.

Piers Morgan 8:39 ... of people who would have chips on their shoulders about, in the snobs' case, looking down on people, in the yobs' case, hating people who had more privilege than them. I think I came out of that environment, both environments, with quite a healthy, "You either have a chip on both shoulders or you have no chip at all."

Steven Bartlett 8:55 Mm.

Piers Morgan 8:55 I think my ability to be exactly the same whether I'm sitting with Nelson Mandela and the Queen or my old village mates comes entirely from that dual-pronged education I had, where I saw great privilege and no privilege and had to work out a way of thriving in both environments. And I think that was good for me, actually.

Steven Bartlett 9:17 If I removed that experience of that comprehensive school-

Piers Morgan 9:19 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 9:19 ... especially that, before your brother arrived, um, and saved you from the bullying, per se-

Piers Morgan 9:25 Yeah. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 9:26 ... um, what would, if I removed that experience, what would I remove from adult Piers Morgan?

Piers Morgan 9:30 (sniffs) Um, I think resilience and mental strength. These are two things that I'm extremely hot about. I think this generation in particular has lost the ability to look at mental strength and resilience and triumph over adversity and being tough in difficult times as badges of honor. They've almost become badges of shame, where people feel like it's wrong to have a stiff upper lip, to be strong-minded, to be resilient, to be tough under pressure. And I looked, uh, yesterday I was watching the golf, uh, the Masters, Tiger Woods. Look at Tiger Woods' story. I mean, unbelievable. At 21, he's the greatest golfer that's ever lived. Destroying everybody. He has it all. He wins 14 majors. Then he has one of the greatest falls in the history of sport, and it all involves, you know, Vegas, mayhem, and so on. And his world collapses. Then he has horrific injuries. He becomes number 1,100 in the world. He's finished. There's a whole mashup of clips of people saying, "He's washed up. He's finished. He'll never win again," whatever. And there's also a video of him watching that mashup just after he wins the 2019 Masters, which no one said he could do again. And again, now he has a horrific car crash, you know, a year ago, and yet here he is competing in the Masters. He's made the cut again. The guy is a freak of nature, but he's a freak of mental strength. And I look at him, and I see Rocky Balboa in mentality. And I look at many other sports stars at the moment who think it's fine to quit, to give up, to walk away, to complain all the time, to moan about their lot in life, and I think, "How have we come to this? How, even in high-level sport, has quitting now become something to celebrate?" Now, it's a contentious issue, and people say you're mocking mental health when you do this, but I don't think so. I think we treat the whole mental health debate the wrong way. I think we should separate mental health from mental illness. I don't think mental health is an issue to even be debated, particularly. We all have mental health, but if you have a mental illness, you need help, you need treatment. Right now, people are, it seems to me, looking at normal life stuff as some form of mental illness. An- anxiety is exploding. People saying they're mentally sick, the incidence of that is exploding. How can that be happening when it's all we're talking about 24/7? I think we're going about it the wrong way, and I think what we're losing in this debate is a celebration of resilience and mental strength. I really believe that. And I think, uh, I think schools should have more people in there teaching kids how to be tougher, about how to deal with normal life stuff. And I'm not talking about people who have clinical depression or suicidal tendencies or any of those things. Those are serious mental illnesses. I'm talking about people who are...... thinking that normal stuff that's happening in my life, which we all have to go through, grief, when you lose a loved one, trouble at work, trouble with relationships, whatever it may be, you've got to learn to be more resilient about these things because that is life. Life, as Rocky Balboa said, is, it's not a, it's not a bed of roses. Life is tough, you know, and it's not about how many times, as Rocky said to his son, in the famous scene in the sixth of the franchise, when they have that scene in the street with the spoiled entitled son whining away about everything, and Rocky turns on him finally and says, "Look, it's not how many times you can hit. It's how many times you can get hit, get knocked down and get back up and keep moving forward." That is what life's about, and I don't think we spend enough time helping people to be mentally strong and resilient. We're spending too much time encouraging a kind of wallowing in self-pity and weakness, and it's, it is, um, I'm afraid, it's not working. Demonstrably not working. I remember you, when you did an interview with a famous world leader, I think he was a terrorist, and you said to him about his daughter, "What if your daughter had dated a Jewish guy?" Yeah. As, so- Uh, President Ahmadinejad of Iran. Yeah. So, so, the f- I'll use that same, uh- Mm-hmm. ... technique. If, if one of your children comes to you and they, and they express some kind of symptom, which could either be a lack of mental resilience or it could be- But they do. Yeah. They do. And how do you know the difference, though? Well, you don't, but I talk to them. Yeah. And I tal- I try and with all my kids, they're all very different, but they've all come to me at certain stages with issues, uh, they want help with, and I always try and drill into them perspective. The great thing you get as you get older, and I'm 57 now, you learn about life, good, bad, and ugly. You learn from mistakes. You learn from stuff that's gone bad in your life. You learn that actually you either give up or you keep pounding, as I keep, always say to them, "Keep pounding. Just keep pounding. It'll be fine." And it invariably is fine. So they start to realize over time that I'm right, that actually just keep going, right? Don't give up, whatever it is. If it's a work issue, if it's an exam issue, if it's a relationship issue, whatever it is. I have these conversations all the time with my kids. You know, they're like, they're, they're people I spend most time talking to, and I try and, you know, there a- and they all need different advice and different help in different ways. Uh, but what I try and do is perspective all the time. And based on my own experience, it's like, I've been there. I've been in this position. It feels like the worst thing in the world. You know, you lose a girlfriend that you love, you lose a job that you love, you, you know, you crash a car, you lose a family member that you love, whatever it may be. There are all sorts of things that will come and test you, especially as you get older. You s- you lose your first friend, who dies, when you're young. I can remember losing a, one of my closest friends before he was even 30. Devastating. Absolutely devastating. But when it happens again and again with people that you care about, you realize that's life. Life is what it is. You have one life and people die and people you love die and people you care about die, and you've got to learn to ride that, that wave of grief. And it's not mental illness. It's not anxiety. It's actually just something we all have to deal with. But too much, I think, too many young people today feel unnaturally anxious about these things, as they did about the pandemic or about the war in Ukraine. An interesting conversation I had with Dr. Phil, uh, here in America, actually about this, who said when he was young, he gave the analogy, when he was young, if a, someone was eaten by a crocodile on a golf course in Florida, very unlikely that anyone would know that outside of the immediate area. You know, there were very few, it was one or two m- main television news bulletins a day. There were very few national newspapers, most were state or county newspapers. And so it might get reported in the local paper. That would be it. But certainly nobody outside of Florida would likely ever hear about that. The difference now is young people will see the video of the person being eaten by the crocodile within 20 minutes of it happening. Quite likely, someone will have got it on a camera on their phone. So they're being exposed all the time to a sensory overload of qu- quite grim stuff. Ukraine is a very good example of, uh, the first time, really, we've had a war of this kind, where we're all watching it in real time, unfurl on social media. We're seeing all the videos. We're seeing the horror in real first-hand, you know, exposure. And that has to have an effect on your senses. It has to increase your anxiety levels. I get all that. Um, you know, my grandmother was 19 in World War II when it started, 25 when it ended. She didn't see all this stuff. You just didn't get exposed to it. But if she had been, it would have probably had a devastating effect on her. So, I think that I have sympathy with this generation. I think in many ways, they're a great generation. They're better informed than any previous generation. I think that these networks like Instagram, Facebook, Twitter and so on, they've certainly given people an amazing connection with each other, but they've also got this terrible FOMO which has been created (laughs) , which I see the first time with my kids. When they're somewhere and all their mates are somewhere else, all they're seeing is all the fun going on, on Instagram. Mm-hmm. And it makes them a bit anxious. I never had that. I didn't know what my friends were doing in my next village. So things have changed. Technology's changed. It's good in one way. It's, can be bad in other ways, and we've got to work out a way to help young people but ultimately, I come back to I don't want to be unsympathetic, certainly. I want to help but I do think we're going about it the wrong way. I think we're e- encouraging a wallowing. We're celebrating self-pity. We're celebrating victimhood in a way that everybody now is like, you see stuff on Twitter like, you know, "I've just failed my driving test for the fourth time but I'm so proud of myself for the journey I've gone on." What, what are you talking about?What do you mean you're proud of yourself? You just failed your driving test for the fourth time. There's nothing to be proud of.

Steven Bartlett 18:36 I get that part. The bit that I, I still, I s- I'm still struggling to get on board with is, having sat here with even... I know you know Roman Kemp-

Piers Morgan 18:42 Yeah. Love Roman, yeah.

Steven Bartlett 18:42 ... um, and, and his father, right? Having sat here with Roman Kemp and h- h- hearing this, what he went through with his, his friend who was on his radio station with him-

Piers Morgan 18:49 Yes. I'm very aware of that, yeah.

Steven Bartlett 18:50 ... killed himself, killed himself out of the blue-

Piers Morgan 18:51 Yes.

Steven Bartlett 18:52 ... and never spoke to anyone. And Roman said, "If I'd lined up 20 of my friends and said, 'Which one is suicidal?' he would have been named last-"

Piers Morgan 18:58 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 18:58 "... in my estimation." So when I reflect on that and I, I, I look at male suicides in particular-

Piers Morgan 19:03 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 19:03 ... and a lot of what the mental health organizations say the causes of that, one of them is that men just don't talk about how they're feeling-

Piers Morgan 19:08 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 19:08 ... and then that results in alcoholism and in these other kinds of things.

Piers Morgan 19:11 Yeah, but I do talk about it.

Steven Bartlett 19:12 Yeah.

Piers Morgan 19:12 And I do encourage people to talk about it.

Steven Bartlett 19:13 So, but this is what I'm saying. So when, when someone says the use of the word "wallowing," that sounds very similar-

Piers Morgan 19:18 Depends what they're wallowing in.

Steven Bartlett 19:19 Yeah.

Piers Morgan 19:20 If they're wallowing in...

Steven Bartlett 19:22 But you know when you use those, those words-

Piers Morgan 19:23 Yes.

Steven Bartlett 19:24 ... you know, because you, you're a smart man and you-

Piers Morgan 19:26 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 19:26 ... you, you write. You know that people will misunderstand the use of the word, and there's harm in that misunderstanding.

Piers Morgan 19:32 But that's them misunderstanding what I mean by it.

Steven Bartlett 19:35 Okay.

Piers Morgan 19:35 It's a bit like the debate about obesity. We're now at the ludicrous stage of this debate where you're not allowed to call people fat. You're not allowed to. It's offensive.

Steven Bartlett 19:44 Hm.

Piers Morgan 19:44 So we now have a situation where you see a 310-pound model on the cover of Cosmopolitan who's five foot two. She's dangerously, morbidly obese. But the cover picture and the interview, six pages inside, never mentions that. It celebrates her body-positive image. There's nothing body-positive about being morbidly obese. She's going to die if she is enabled in this way going forward. I'm not afraid to say that. And the, a society that doesn't go there and pretends that this is all perfectly acceptable is doing that woman an incredible disservice. So when you say, "Well, you can't use the word 'wallowing'"... But I would say to you, Stephen-

Steven Bartlett 20:23 I didn't say that.

Piers Morgan 20:23 No, but you're replying it.

Steven Bartlett 20:24 Yeah, yeah, yeah. I was-

Piers Morgan 20:25 You're replying to the word "wallowing"-

Steven Bartlett 20:26 I'm saying there's a danger. Yeah, yeah.

Piers Morgan 20:26 Yeah, because I, I would say to you, a lot of people do wallow. I see them. I-

Steven Bartlett 20:30 What's the difference between wallowing and t- coming to a friend and saying, "I'm feeling really..." or even tweeting it-

Piers Morgan 20:35 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 20:35 ... saying, "I'm feeling like there's something wrong with me." What's the difference between wallowing and that?

Piers Morgan 20:38 Well, there's a line. I don't know I know exactly what the line is. But I do know when friends or family members come to me, either they come to me with something where I think, "Yeah, they've got a valid reason to feel this way," or sometimes you just gotta go, "Get o- Get over it." And th- then they might laugh and have a drink and they get over it.

Steven Bartlett 20:56 I think the thing-

Piers Morgan 20:56 By the way, you're not allowed to say that anymore. There'll be people watching this, your younger audience will be going, "Oh my God, did he just tell people to get over it? He's talking about people with mental illness." No, I'm not. No, I'm not. Be very careful that you listen to what I'm saying. I distinguish between people who I believe have mental illness-

Steven Bartlett 21:11 Yeah.

Piers Morgan 21:12 ... and people who I believe are genuinely wallowing because society has decided that it wants to celebrate people who have something wrong with them-

Steven Bartlett 21:21 Mm.

Piers Morgan 21:21 ... more than it celebrates now people who are successful and tough achievers and talk about having grit and stiff upper lip and all these things. That's all become sticks to beat people with.

Steven Bartlett 21:31 Mm.

Piers Morgan 21:31 I, I have it used against me. "How dare you talk about a stiff upper lip?" Well, why shouldn't I? Why shouldn't I? I have a stiff upper lip. I've been through a lot of crap in my life, and I've decided that I- that's the way I deal with it. You may not like it, and maybe you like to deal with it by going, "Woe is me." And one of my favorite poems is a, uh, I think it was a DH Lawrence poem called, about self-pity. It's only three or four lines. And it says, "A wild thing never feels sorry for itself. A bird will die frozen on a bough of a tree before it feels self-pity," or something like that. It's a brilliant poem. That's it. It's only about four lines. And I get that point, is that in the, in the jungle, in the world of animals, self-pity doesn't exist. Wallowing in your own woe doesn't exist. You gotta get on with it. You know, one of my favorite conversations ever with, with Sir Roger Bannister, who sadly died, but he was the first man to break the four-minute mile. And he... I, I asked him. H- He used to live in the square I live in in London, and he came to one of the 200th anniversary of the square. And I had a chat with him, and I said, "Did you have any... You know, when you won this amazing..." and he killed it, he collapsed at the line. I said, "Did you have any sort of motivational quote that drove you?" And he went, funnily enough, he said, "I have one. It was an anonymous proverb from the African bush." And it was, "When a lion wakes up in the morning, it knows one thing. It has to run faster than the slowest gazelle, or it won't eat. And when a gazelle wakes up in the morning, it knows it has to run faster than the slowest lion, or it's gonna get killed. So whatever you are in the African bush, one thing's for sure. When the sun comes up, you better start running." And that motivated him. And it's a great quote. And I think it's a great quote for all your viewers, listeners of this podcast to take away from this interview. If you take one thing away, get running, get moving, be positive. Don't let normal life stuff drag you down. Because if it does, it will dominate your life, and you'll become one of those sort of miserable, self-absorbed people in the wrong way-

Steven Bartlett 23:34 Mm.

Piers Morgan 23:34 ... where all you're thinking about is you and your problems and your woes. It's like, there are a lot of people a lot worse off than you. When I see some of the crap I'm watching at the moment on social media of people feeling sorry for themselves when you see what's happening in Ukraine, it actually makes me puke. It's like, watch what's happening to the people of Ukraine and get a perspective about your life. And I'm sorry if that sounds tough.

Steven Bartlett 23:57 Hm.

Piers Morgan 23:57 But I'm not sorry, actually.

Steven Bartlett 24:00 I get your... I completely get the point about mental resilience, and I think there's so much of what you said that I really agree with, especially about our younger generation. I'm s- I've, I've said it on this podcast many times, I am scared of over-labeling things, things that might just be a bad mood or whatever with, with something else which is much more medically, um, concerning. Um, when I asked that question then, you, you said it depends what it is-

Piers Morgan 24:21 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 24:21 ... in, in terms of a friend coming to you with a mental health disorder. The problem is, you'll know that these things are so subjective. So when a... When someone c- Like, people could genuinely be suicidal, genuinely be suicidal, not, well, faking it or looking for attention, over...... losing a cryptocurrency investment. I read an article about that the other day.

Piers Morgan 24:39 Hm.

Steven Bartlett 24:39 Guy's crypto investment goes down, kills himself.

Piers Morgan 24:42 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 24:42 So I've, I've, I... The risk I see is being the judge of whether someone's feelings are worthy of the, the emotion. That's the risk. It's like, you know, like-

Piers Morgan 24:52 I think there are-

Steven Bartlett 24:53 'Cause, 'cause-

Piers Morgan 24:53 There are millions of people out there prepared to do what you're talking about. I, I'm a very rare voice in the public platform arena who's prepared to give a slightly different perspective on this stuff. And to me, there's room for both of us. You know, you don't need any more people who are gonna give 24/7 coverage to mental health as an issue-

Steven Bartlett 25:16 Mm-hmm.

Piers Morgan 25:16 ... as it, as, on the assumption we're all slightly mentally ill. I just don't buy it. You know, I read, I read a report last year that said 33 million people in Britain are mentally ill. No they're not. It's crap, absolute crap. And when, when a society pretends that is the case, because a lot of people are identifying as mentally ill when actually they just have anxiety about exams or relationships or whatever it may be, when we do that, it means the people who really need help are not getting it. It means they're slipping through the cracks, in my opinion. And that's the problem with it. Um, and, you know, it's not about being callous or insensitive. My, I think my kids would tell you, I spend hours and hours sometimes talking through problems with them. But always, I come back to, "Look, life's tough and you gotta keep pounding." That's my mantra 'cause it's one I've applied to myself, and my family have had a lot of stuff to deal with, and they've kept pounding.

Steven Bartlett 26:09 Mm-hmm.

Piers Morgan 26:10 'Cause what's the alternative, really? It, the alternative is you give up. And that, to me, is not an option, not an option that would bring me any pleasure. Couldn't look in the mirror having just given up all the time. Why would, why would that bring anyone pleasure?

Steven Bartlett 26:23 I had a few words to say about one of my sponsors on this podcast. For many years, people have been asking for a coffee-flavored Huel, and quite recently, Huel released the iced coffee caramel flavor of their, um, ready-to-drink Huels. And I've just become hooked on it, eh, over the last couple of weeks. I've been on a really interesting journey with Huel, which I've described and talked about a little bit on this podcast. I started with the berry ready-to-drinks. Then I moved over to the protein salted caramel because it's 100 calories and it gives you all of your essential vitamins and minerals, but also gives you the 20-odd grams of protein you need. And now, I'm balanced between them both. I drink mostly the banana flavor ready to drink. I've got really into the iced coffee caramel, um, flavor of, of Huel's ready to drink, and now I'm drinking that as well as the protein. Make sure you try the new ready-to-drink flavors, the, the caramel flavor's amazing, the, um, b- new banana flavor as well is amazing, and obviously, as I said, the iced coffee caramel flavor has been a real smash hit. So check it out. Let me know what you think on social media. I see all of your tags and Instagram posts and tweets about Huel. (whispers) Back to the podcast. (paper rustles)

Steven Bartlett 27:27 One of the things that I love about your, um, well, I was really compelled by, by your story as I read through your early professional career, was clearly, for some reason, which I couldn't figure out from just reading, you got ahead quite quickly. Kelvin gave you a shot-

Piers Morgan 27:41 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 27:41 ... at The Sun. Rupert Murdoch gave you a shot at News, News of the World when you were 28. He made you the-

Piers Morgan 27:45 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 27:46 ... the editor of the largest newspaper in the Western Hemisphere, if I'm not correct-

Piers Morgan 27:49 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 27:50 ... at 28 years old. So when I was reading that, I, I, I, I thought, "I've got to ask him." Why? What was it about you?

Piers Morgan 27:56 Well, I think the, I remember Alex Ferguson saying, (clears throat) I know you're a big United fan, my sympathies at this difficult time.

Steven Bartlett 28:01 (laughs)

Piers Morgan 28:02 But I remember him saying that he loved youth because there was a fearlessness of youth. I think I was quite fearless in my 20s, certainly. You know, before you get responsibility, before you get married, you have kids, and so on, you get other people you're responsible for, there's a fearlessness that comes with youth. And I think I had that, certainly. It was instilled by, the confidence came from my family, very strong women in particular in my family. My mum, my grandmother, tremendously strong people who'd come through a lot of adversity, um, never wallowed in self-pity, to quote you, awful phrase I know drives you mad. Uh, but they never did, and that was just not allowed. It was always like, "Just get on with it, you know, dust yourself down, get on with it." And I liked that, to be honest. I thrived under that mantra. And I remember Kelvin MacKenzie, who was a mercurial genius in many, many ways, brutal but brilliant, you know, hilarious and barbaric. I mean, he was like everything. But The Sun had an amazing power and voice when he was in charge of it. And he said the most annoying thing about me was that he could give me the most savage bollocking, where literally his sort of neck veins would start to explode, and within an hour, I'd bounce back into his office bouncing with excitement 'cause I had a scoop for him, and I was completely unfazed by the bollocking. It had motivated me to go and prove him wrong and get, and get a good story. I think that's how people should be in life. I think it's a shame that in the workplace now, you're not allowed to raise your voice. You're not allowed to. It's bullying. Everyone's a victim of bullying. You can't have any banter anymore, can't have any fun. All the joy has been sucked out of life by this woke brigade of, in my view, awful people who just think that life should be humorless, banterless, uh, everything is bullying, every criticism is bullying, everything is terrible, people are awful, you can't have fun, you can't do anything. I don't buy it. It's not what most people are like. Most people aren't like that. They don't actually believe half the crap they're coming out with.

Steven Bartlett 30:01 (laughs)

Piers Morgan 30:01 They don't. It's not how anybody wants to lead their lives. We know from the pandemic what it's like when our freedom, our basic freedom gets taken away. Why, when we're coming out of a pandemic, would we want to lead a joyless existence?

Steven Bartlett 30:12 How do we fix this? 'Cause I agree with you. How-

Piers Morgan 30:14 I, I think that common sense has to come into play. I think the problem with the, the woke cancel culture, as I put it, is that if you go and study it... I wrote a whole book about this last year. It was a massive bestseller.

Steven Bartlett 30:25 I read it.

Piers Morgan 30:25 People understood it, right? So I think you know where I come from. Probably politically, we're not that far apart from each other-

Steven Bartlett 30:30 Mm-hmm.

Piers Morgan 30:30 ... I guess, from what I know about you. Um, but I, I went and studied the origin of the word "woke" and what it meant. I, by that definition, I'm woke.I believe in promoting, uh, campaigns against racial and social injustice. I've done it all my career, as a newspaper editor and as a television broadcaster. You know, I've done that. It doesn't cut any ice though with the modern woke brigade 'cause they've stolen wokery and they've now used it as a new form of fascism, where they wanna dictate to people how they lead their lives, what they can find funny, what movies are acceptable and not acceptable, what television shows they can enjoy, you know, what haircuts they can have that aren't inappropriate or cultural inappropriation. You can't celebrate any other culture anymore. It's all inappropriate. Every joke is inappropriate. Every comedian has to be canceled. People can't host the Oscars if they told a inappropriate joke 10 years before. Uh, yet Roman Polanski was given an Oscar after he raped a child. I mean, the sort of warped morality of all this is absolutely extraordinary to me. But at its center, a woman came up to me in Kensington a few months ago, after the Markle debacle, as I call it, and she said, she said, "Mr. Morgan, I'm an 80-year-old Australian woman, but don't hold either of those things against me." And we had a laugh in the street. And she said, "The trouble with these wokies is they wanna suck all the joy out of life." And I thought, "What a brilliant way of describing it." And they've literally become the very fascists that they profess to hate most, and we have to counter it. And so my ambition with my new show, for example, is to cancel cancel culture, to go back to what a democracy should be, to what society should be when it's supposedly democratic, where you and I can have a spirited debate about something and agree to disagree and go and have a beer. Or maybe we reach points of consensus, which is what used to happen. I've had ferocious arguments with my friends and family my entire life. The idea I would disown them, as you see happening all the time now with people falling out with friends and family because they're so blindly self-righteous about their own opinion that they can't tolerate another opinion, the idea we have university campuses where only one certain type of voice is tolerated, at a university, a place you're supposed to learn all sorts of disparate views, hear all different voices and make your own mind up. Now, no. Unless they're woke speakers, no one else is allowed. If you're a conservative, which, by the way, many millions of people are in this country, in America, in Australia, if you're a conservative, you are the enemy to be crushed and destroyed and no platformed. Really? How did we get there? How could any student have their mind developed or evolved in an environment that cancels anybody for deviating from a woke agenda? It's madness. You know, and when I look at what's happening with the transgender debate, I support transgender rights to fairness and equality. I always have, publicly, in columns, on television, on Twitter. I've been very clear. I want transgender people to have equality and fairness, right to the point where trans activism leads to an erosion of women's rights, as we're seeing all over the place, not least in the world of sport. If anybody genuinely wants to sit here and say to me that what's going on in women's sport with transgender athletes is fair or equal, I'd love to listen to it, because it's bullshit. We all know it's unfair, and what's being caught in the crosshairs of this is that m- many trans people who don't wanna get involved in this debate and just wanna be able to go about their lives and try and have a life of fairness and equality, they're getting subjected to mockery and ridicule because it's so ridiculous what's going on with trans sport. And so I say to people, "Yeah, you can say to me, 'You're bigoted and you're transphobic,' but I'm not. I'm actually just a voice of common sense." When you see even J.K. Rowling canceled-

Steven Bartlett 34:31 Hmm.

Piers Morgan 34:32 ... because she believes in the biology of sex, it's just madness. Sex is not something you can just pretend, like gender, it can be anything you make up on the spur of the moment. It can't be.

Steven Bartlett 34:44 You, you've seen how this has got progressively more... Let's say, the world has got progressively more woke. I think algorithms and Twitter-

Piers Morgan 34:52 Well, no. The w- the world has moved from being woke- (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 34:56 Right. Okay, to a new type of... Right.

Piers Morgan 34:56 ... by the original... I think that most people in the '60s, '70s, and '80s wanted to see better racial equality and social equality, most people.

Steven Bartlett 35:06 Mm-hmm.

Piers Morgan 35:07 That's what the original definition of woke was. The modern-day woke is nothing to do with that. The modern-day woke is a form of fascism.

Steven Bartlett 35:15 Okay. So you-

Piers Morgan 35:16 "You will abide by our rules, or you get destroyed." That's the difference to me.

Steven Bartlett 35:21 So the world has got more of this modern-day wokism.

Piers Morgan 35:23 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 35:24 Right? Um, and it's... I- I've seen it on social media, the way the algorithms work as well, they show you more of the same. They keep reinforcing you.

Piers Morgan 35:29 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 35:29 Then they cla- then, uh, because you build an audience of the same people, they clap more when you say a certain thing.

Piers Morgan 35:33 Yes.

Steven Bartlett 35:34 It kind of reinforces you.

Piers Morgan 35:34 You preach to your choir.

Steven Bartlett 35:35 Yeah.

Piers Morgan 35:36 You know, I- I- I...

Steven Bartlett 35:37 And they clap more.

Piers Morgan 35:38 The analogy I would use, you go back 2,000 years, we lived in tribes.

Steven Bartlett 35:41 Yeah. That's written in your book. Yeah.

Piers Morgan 35:42 Yeah, right. And I told the story, you never used to come out of your tribe. So everyone in the tribe would look the same, same attitudes, eat the same food, drink the same drink, same senses of humor, because you never moved out of this group of people.

Steven Bartlett 35:53 Mm-hmm.

Piers Morgan 35:54 And then people began to move out of their tribes and meet other tribes who dressed differently, thought differently, laughed at different things, maybe spoke differently. And both tribes in that moment decided the only answer to this was to kill each other. Well, that's where we've gone back to.

Steven Bartlett 36:08 Are you optimistic that, that-

Piers Morgan 36:09 Not really, no.

Steven Bartlett 36:11 So this is inter- that's what I wanted to say is, your antidote for this new wokism is to lead and to create a counter-narrative, which is what you're doing with your new show, Piers Morgan Uncensored-

Piers Morgan 36:20 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 36:20 It's what you did with your book as well. Are you optimistic, deeply, that that will win?

Piers Morgan 36:25 Well, let me ask you a question. So I'm, I'm described as highly controversial, right? I've been called all sorts of names. People say that what I say, things I say are outrageous.

Steven Bartlett 36:34 Mm-hmm.

Piers Morgan 36:34 ... when you read my book-

Steven Bartlett 36:36 Mm-hmm.

Piers Morgan 36:36 ... how many times did you stop and think, "That's outrageous"?

Steven Bartlett 36:38 No, I didn't really disagree with anything.

Piers Morgan 36:40 Right. So that's my point.

Steven Bartlett 36:41 Yeah. Yeah.

Piers Morgan 36:41 I don't think I'm the controversial one.

Steven Bartlett 36:43 Well, so s- sometimes-

Piers Morgan 36:44 I, I think I come at this from a reasonably common sense perspective.

Steven Bartlett 36:46 In, in your book, I didn't disagree with you at all-

Narrator 36:47 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 36:47 ... because you were talking about things like popularism and liberalism and how it's changed.

Narrator 36:51 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 36:51 I completely agree. I think I used to identify as being on the left. Now, I don't because the, the, the attitude-

Piers Morgan 36:57 'Cause they're nuts, a lot of them.

Steven Bartlett 36:58 Yeah, a lot of it is absolutely nuts. I also don't really identify with being on the right either-

Piers Morgan 37:01 No, I agree. I agree.

Steven Bartlett 37:02 ... 'cause they're nuts as well. So I find myself in this middle ground.

Piers Morgan 37:03 You get nuts on both sides-

Steven Bartlett 37:04 Yeah.

Piers Morgan 37:04 ... and we're moving to the extremities.

Steven Bartlett 37:06 Yeah. But I'll get canceled from both sides-

Piers Morgan 37:08 Yes.

Steven Bartlett 37:08 ... because I don't wear the football kit of either.

Piers Morgan 37:09 I'm the same.

Steven Bartlett 37:10 Yeah.

Piers Morgan 37:10 So I wanna bring back a, a more consense-related society, where consensus, where you reach points of agreement through debate, and you don't try and shame or cancel each other for having different opinions, because that's at the core of this. You know, they call themselves liberals. They're not liberal. Liberalism isn't about an inability to tolerate other opinions. It's the opposite, right? (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 37:36 Mm-hmm.

Piers Morgan 37:36 You're supposed to tolerate and respect other opinions, um, and agree to disagree. We've lost this in society because a small group of people, but very vocal and very angry about everything all the time-

Steven Bartlett 37:49 Mm.

Piers Morgan 37:49 ... they are driving an agenda which, if we go down that road, will be the end of a democratic society as we know it. So I see myself humbly as trying to defend democracy.

Steven Bartlett 38:01 Humbly. (laughs)

Piers Morgan 38:01 Genuinely. I know, and humility is not something that comes naturally to me.

Steven Bartlett 38:04 (laughs)

Piers Morgan 38:04 But genuinely trying to defend what democracy really is, and trying to educate these wokies about what real liberalism is, what democracy actually means, what free speech means. Free speech is not about you in an echo chamber all agreeing with each other. As Churchill said, "Free speech is about listening to views you just don't agree with, but allowing people to have different views."

Steven Bartlett 38:30 You, you know, it's funny. I, I went around the world when I was running my marketing business, um, before I resigned, and I used to have one slide on my presentation deck that had your face on it.

Piers Morgan 38:39 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 38:40 And do you know who else's face was on that same slide deck? I went all around the world with this-

Piers Morgan 38:43 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 38:43 ... presentation, met with Apple, Amazon. I had Piers Morgan, Katie Hopkins, Kanye West, and Donald Trump.

Piers Morgan 38:50 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 38:50 And I used to tell people that there's a v- very important thing to learn from these four people, because whether you like them or not, in marketing, the, the least profitable outcome is indifference-

Piers Morgan 38:59 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 38:59 ... where you don't care either way.

Piers Morgan 39:00 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 39:01 And people have an opinion. It's funny because, you know, I was talking to the, the guys on my team here yesterday, and they don't always agree with you, but they're always listening.

Piers Morgan 39:08 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 39:09 And sometimes, you know, on the COVID issues or this issue, they'll be behind you, and then they'll be against you. But do you realize, strategically, um, the art of being the cen- being the center of conversation?

Piers Morgan 39:20 Yes.

Steven Bartlett 39:21 And, and what, what are the principles if, if it, if it's a brand trying to be relevant or the center of attention-

Piers Morgan 39:27 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 39:27 ... or if it's a person and their personal brand, for you, what are the principles for one to replicate what you've done with that?

Piers Morgan 39:33 Confidence-

Steven Bartlett 39:34 Confidence.

Piers Morgan 39:34 ... in, in yourself, self-belief.

Steven Bartlett 39:36 Yeah.

Piers Morgan 39:36 I think the one thing I have is a lot of self-belief. I'm, I'm firmly... I remember a friend of mine, Kevin Pietersen, the cricketer, his big mantra with himself when he played cricket for England was, "Back yourself. Back yourself," whoever you're facing. He was one of the few players in history to demolish Shane Warne at his peak in the 2005 Ashes series 'cause he backed himself to smash him.

Steven Bartlett 39:58 But it's risky.

Piers Morgan 39:58 It's risky.

Steven Bartlett 39:58 As we've seen from your career.

Piers Morgan 39:59 It's risky, but as Wayne Gretzky, the greatest ice hockey player in history, said brilliantly, "You'll miss 100% of the shots you don't take." You gotta take risks in life. You gotta learn from failure. Mars, the confectioners, used to celebrate chocolate bars that didn't work more than they did chocolate bars that worked. They worked on the assumption that most of their bars would work. They tested them, tested them, tested them. They knew what they were doing. So most of their bar, new bars would, would work. But if they occasionally had a failure out of nowhere, st- stunned everyone, they would celebrate that 'cause I reckon they learn more from the failure than they did from the endless success. And I, I agree. I've learned more from failures than success. Success is easy. When you're successful, everyone wants to have a piece of the pie. And I've had great success, and I've had wonderfully, you know, cataclysmic moments of bedoing. And when you get the bedoing, the old cliché, "You find out who your friends are," is completely true. You find out who your friends are. You find out who actually cares about you, who's prepared to stand up for you. You know, I remember after my dramatic departure from Good Morning Britain, Sharon Osbourne tweeting, uh, that I was entitled to my opinion. She knew by doing that, there could be massive repercussions for her, given how incendiary the whole debate was. It cost her her job, scandalously, scandalously. She was described as a racist sympathizer on her show The Talk. But when she asked them to describe what racist things I'd said, they weren't able to do so because guess what? I'd said nothing racist. Nothing I thought about Meghan Markle was driven by anything to do with her race or skin color. Why would it be? I just thought she was a disingenuous piece of work smearing the royal family. I'm entitled to that opinion. You may not agree with it. I think most people who watched the interview probably ended up agreeing with me. Doesn't really matter whether you agree or not. But the idea that Sharon Osbourne was destroyed at the altar of cancel culture because she had the audacity to say I was entitled to an opinion, not that she even agreed with my opinion, just that I was entitled to one. That, in that moment, said to me how ridiculous this culture has got, ridiculous. And I'm delighted that Sharon is now gonna be back on talk TV in the UK, in the show after mine, on a show called The Talk. She's gonna be un-cancelled by us 'cause she should never have been canceled in the first place. And when people say cancel culture doesn't exist, look at what happened to Sharon.... look at the effect it had on her and her family. Devastating. She couldn't get a job in America, where she'd worked for 40 years. So it's going on, and I- I- I want to cancel that culture. I think it's wrong.

Steven Bartlett 42:40 So c- so one of... So that led to... That was the first point. There was confidence and backing yourself.

Piers Morgan 42:44 Yes. I think the other thing, you gotta have a bit of bravado, a bit of chutzpah. You gotta have an ability to know how to stir things up and wind people up. I like to annoy all the right people who are so permanently offended by everything. They're easy to wind up.

Steven Bartlett 42:58 But do you care?

Piers Morgan 42:58 Do I enjoy that? Yes. I love sometimes just putting a tweet out. I mean, the, the vegan sausage roll debate was one of the funniest things ever. I had the flu on holiday in Italy. I was in bed sweating with a raging fever, and I saw Greg saying, "The wait is over. Finally, it's here, the vegan sausage roll." I said, "What on earth are you talking about?"

Narrator 43:17 (laughs)

Piers Morgan 43:18 Who's been waiting for a vegan sausage roll? Apart from anything else, I agree with the French, where it's illegal to market, uh, vegetarian or vegan products using meat language. A sausage roll is meat. If vegans wanna eat their gruel, fine. Go and have a joyless existence munching your lentils. Don't take my language. Don't pretend your sausage rolls are real sausage rolls. They're not.

Steven Bartlett 43:42 But do you care? (laughs)

Piers Morgan 43:42 And they're tasteless, and they've got more calories-

Steven Bartlett 43:44 (laughs) But you care? But you care?

Piers Morgan 43:44 ... than a McDonald's cheeseburger. So, so my point is, that... Do I care? Look, I don't care as much as I do about Ukraine.

Narrator 43:49 (laughs)

Piers Morgan 43:49 But in the moment, it really annoyed me that there was a presumption, we'd all been waiting for a vegan sausage roll. And I was also annoyed that you were seeing stories of vegans charging into state restaurants and playing music of cows being killed. It's like, shut up and go away. I'll... Don't come into your gruel restaurants ever and shout about what you do to the bee community in California when you eat your almonds and almond milk, right? Billions of bees exterminated every year in a six-week cull in California so vegans can eat almonds and eat avocados.

Steven Bartlett 44:22 But do you care about vegan sausage rolls 'cause-

Piers Morgan 44:24 I care about the hypocrisy that surrounds the debate, actually.

Steven Bartlett 44:27 Okay.

Piers Morgan 44:27 So anyway, I did a tweet saying, "This is ridiculous." And, (laughs) and everyone went nuts. I wasn't allowed to think that this was ridiculous. I had to agree that vegan sausage rolls were fantastic. Everyone goes bonkers. Greg's love it 'cause they sell, I think, about a billion dollars' worth more of their products that year. In fact, the CEO thanked me personally at the end-of-year results, so they cleaned up. In fact, I'm thinking about going to a business where all I do is take big checks from companies to attack their products. Probably make a fortune. Um, but the whole thing just showed me that everyone was allowed to love vegan sausage rolls, but if you deviated from that and said you hated them, you had to be destroyed. This wasn't acceptable. The woke brigade had decided vegan sausage rolls were untouchable. You had to support them. You had to think they were great. This was brilliant. Even though they're bad for you, literally worse for you than a McDonald's cheeseburger, uh, in terms of salt and calorie intake, uh, and even though the whole thing was predicated on this utter hypocrisy around vegan food, that somehow they're leaving the little guy... the animals alone when they exterminate the little guys, the bees. And I feel sorry for the bees. No one... You never hear vegans talk about bees, do you? It's always the big animals. They care about cows, not the little guys.

Narrator 45:39 (laughs)

Piers Morgan 45:39 I'm a little guy. I'm a... I'm the Robin Hood of this debate.

Narrator 45:42 (laughs)

Piers Morgan 45:42 I look after the little guys against the Sheriffs of Nottingham.

Steven Bartlett 45:44 Sure. (laughs) When I think about that...

Piers Morgan 45:49 (laughs) .

Steven Bartlett 45:49 So, okay, you play that... You, you play... Y- you know, I know from what you've said here, you know that it... Part of it is a game, and it's a very profitable game.

Piers Morgan 45:55 It's all fun, right? To a point.

Steven Bartlett 45:57 Yeah.

Piers Morgan 45:57 But there's also a serious point behind it, which is that, actually, the vegan food business is a massively burgeoning business, and that's fine. People want to eat that, that's fine. But I do agree with the French, that actually, you shouldn't be allowed to pretend what you're doing is meat-related, 'cause it's not. So there's a genuine point there which I do feel quite strongly about. The French have made it illegal. You can't use meat language to sell vegan products. I think we should go the same way. You have your world, and we'll have ours.

Steven Bartlett 46:25 You know your career has been pretty filled with these moments of, like, where you are the center, the orbit of sort of, you know, debate and controver- controversy? When you go through a period and people aren't tweeting at you abuse and stuff, and they're not kicking off, do you feel a little bit like, "Fuck off, I've made a mistake here"?

Piers Morgan 46:39 Well, i remember Donald Trump telling me when he got to the White House, he, he put four TVs in his bedroom, and he used to wake up in the morning at five o'clock, 'cause he doesn't sleep, and he'd look at the TVs, and if he didn't like what was on the screen or if it wasn't about him, he'd just pull his phone out and tweet something. And next thing, they'd all change in real time. "Breaking news, President Trump says blah, blah, blah." And I kind of related to that. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 46:58 (laughs)

Piers Morgan 46:58 Because if I wake up in the morning and I'm not trending, it's like there's a problem, and I have to deal with it. So yeah, look, I'm in the opinion business. It's very lucrative for me. I make a lot of money out of it. I get a lot of notoriety and fame out of it. People love me or hate me, but, you know, that's part of being in the opinion business. If you don't want to be loved and hated, then you don't express opinions about anything. And that way, to me, madness lies. You know, I'd much rather be... It's like, it's like, again, Churchill. Uh, you know, he said that if you've got enemies, it means at, at some stage in your life, you stood up for something that you believe in. Good. That's good.

Steven Bartlett 47:33 When you've had those, you, you call them catastrophic events in your life-

Piers Morgan 47:36 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 47:36 ... where, you know, pop! And when it-

Piers Morgan 47:37 Well, other people see them as catastrophic. I've never really seen it that way myself. Like, when I got fired from The Mirror, for example-

Steven Bartlett 47:43 Yeah.

Piers Morgan 47:43 ... after 10 years, other people were far more agitated about that and thought it was far more characteristic than I did.

Steven Bartlett 47:49 The Mirror, Good Morning Britain, and this was the other thing about your story which I found really... I wanted to ask you about, is you have these m- these ups and then these downs-

Piers Morgan 47:56 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 47:57 ... and then these ups and these downs. And your Twitter bio, I think, is probably quite an, uh, an apt, um, summary of, of maybe your views on this, which is... I can't remember it exactly, but one day you're the cock of the walk the next day-

Piers Morgan 48:07 One day you're the cock of the walk, the next a feather duster.

Steven Bartlett 48:09 Yeah. So, so... And then I read that, you know, after like The Mirror situation, you slept a lot.

Piers Morgan 48:14 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 48:15 And then, and then also, (laughs) it seems that after every firing or push... getting pushed out, whatever-

Piers Morgan 48:19 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 48:19 ... you go and get pissed.

Piers Morgan 48:20 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 48:21 (laughs) So, tell me-

Piers Morgan 48:22 Well, again, Churchill, who I love, r- as you may have gathered. Again, Churchill, who's now being reviled by the white brigade. Of course, because he saved the world from Nazi Germany, so of course he has to be destroyed. Uh, but Churchill, you know, he, he also said that the best definition of success is going from failure to failure with no discernible loss of enthusiasm. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 48:40 Mm-hmm.

Piers Morgan 48:40 Now, I think I've had a lot of success and occasional failure. But I don't look upon any of the downs in the same way that other people do about my career. I'm very relaxed about my level of success and failure. I think it's all been grease to the mill. Normally, I've left somewhere in explosive circumstances and it's led to something better, invariably. So I'm very optimistic about it. Uh, my glass is always half full. I think that one chapter ending is another chapter about to start. You just have to make sure you get something good.

Steven Bartlett 49:09 If I spoke to your wife-

Piers Morgan 49:10 Hmm.

Steven Bartlett 49:10 ... or maybe even your kids, and I said, "How does Piers' emotional state change after-

Piers Morgan 49:15 (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 49:15 ... in one of these moments of catastrophic failure, getting kicked out, fired-"

Piers Morgan 49:19 They, they, they'd say what I'm saying. All of them.

Steven Bartlett 49:22 They, th- he doesn't change at all?

Piers Morgan 49:24 Barely at all, no.

Steven Bartlett 49:25 Barely at all?

Piers Morgan 49:26 No. I mean, I don't, I don't. Uh, probably, if anything, I'm more relaxed. That's all. Because when you're in one of these cauldron jobs, editing a daily newspaper or doing a morning TV show, you know, and you've got the adrenaline whirring and you're caffeined up and so on, it makes you slightly wired to be around. When you're not doing that, you're more relaxed. I'm probably just calmer, a bit more relaxed. And then that gets a bit boring, and I wanna get back in the game again. Um-

Steven Bartlett 49:47 Okay, so in that, in that gap between one job-

Piers Morgan 49:49 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 49:49 ... and the next, that y- and you've had many of those, those gaps, what's going on in your life and how are you not... 'Cause, 'cause it must be very easy for you to just, uh, rush into something else the next day-

Piers Morgan 49:58 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 49:58 ... but the gap between you leaving Good Morning Britain and then-

Piers Morgan 50:00 I always advise people, when they lose a big job, take your time. Just go and clear your head. You'll get offered loads of things, but don't react to it. Let the dust settle. You know, when I left Good Morning Britain, it was a massive global firestorm, uh, and I just took my time. I had loads of people offering me stuff every day, all sorts of jobs from around the world. I could have taken any one of them. Uh, but actually, I thought, "Oh, I'm just gonna take my time." Just chill, watch some football, watch some cricket, see some friends, uh, get fit. You know, unfortunately, I then got COVID, and that was the end of the fitness campaign for a few months. But the, the principle is clear your head. You get these moments a few times in your life where you get a chance to reset, recalibrate, clear your head, and then work out what you really wanna do next. 'Cause it won't be the same thing three or four months down the line as it feels in the moment. Most people's tendency is when they leave a big job in dramatic circumstances, "I've gotta do the same thing somewhere else, prove my point." I don't feel the need to prove anything to anybody. You know, I was a talent show judge for six years. Loved it. Number one show on British TV and American TV for six years. Great. Then I left. I, I just couldn't think of any more things to say about piano playing pigs. It was time to move on.

Steven Bartlett 51:10 (laughs)

Piers Morgan 51:10 You know, I did Larry King's job at CNN after him for nearly four years. I did 1,200 shows on primetime CNN around the world. People call it a failure. It's like, well, that's 1,200 more than any other British person I've seen (laughs) -

Steven Bartlett 51:22 Mm-hmm.

Piers Morgan 51:23 ... do a primetime talk show in America. So it's all about... It's all relative, isn't it, about what your perception of failure is. I had a great time at CNN, and actually, I wanted to come home. I then did breakfast TV, which I never thought I'd ever wanna do or even enjoy. I loved it, and we absolutely crushed it. We took the ratings from a 14% share to a 36% share. They've now gone back to 18. So people could do the maths. You know, I think it was a massive success. And yet I still meet some people who go, "Oh yeah, it all went wrong for you, didn't it?" I said, "Not really, no." No, it was a brilliant success, Good Morning Britain. Uh, we became the number one breakfast show in the country on my last day. I left on a point of principle, and the principle was, I'm entitled to my opinion. You may not like it, but I'm entitled to my opinion. And in each case where I've had a career-ending c- sort of moment, it's really been where the bosses have lost their battle with me. So I need... I've now gravitated back to my first big boss in the media, Rupert Murdoch, who's got balls of steel. And he's not gonna take a phone call from Meghan Markle demanding my head on a plate. (page turns)

Steven Bartlett 52:28 I had a few words to say about one of my sponsors on this podcast. As we all know, energy independence and living a little greener has never been more important for a better future. It's a, it's a journey I've been on over the last couple of years that I've shared with you sporadically ever since I sold my Range Rover Sport and bought an electric bicycle. And there's a lot of people out there that listen to this podcast that are looking to make that sustainable switch in the things that run their daily life, whether it's their home, their car, their vehicles, whatever it might be. So when a good friend of mine at a company called My Energy called Jordan told me she was interested in sponsoring this podcast, I jumped at the opportunity. So for those of you that don't know, My Energy are a UK renewable energy brand whose mission is to increase the usage of green energy, helping people like you and I to save time and money when it comes to making sustainable switches in our lives. So if this resonates with you and you're the type of person that's been looking or thinking about going on your own sustainability journey, I highly recommend checking them out at myenergy.com.

Steven Bartlett 53:27 (page turns) Meghan Markle, right? Not gonna go into the issu- issues of that. I'm really not that-

Piers Morgan 53:30 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 53:30 ... personally that interested in it.

Piers Morgan 53:31 No.

Steven Bartlett 53:32 But what I was... I did wanna ask you is I saw when you spoke at Oxford, they, you, you were talking about Jeremy Clarkson, getting in a fist fight with him-

Piers Morgan 53:39 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 53:39 ... going down the pub, making up after. And there you said, "I do like to fall out with someone and then make up again."

Piers Morgan 53:44 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 53:45 What would it take for you and Meghan Markle to make up?

Piers Morgan 53:50 She could... Uh, if she did an interview like this with me, it'd be very interesting. You know, it's like, Meghan Markle, to me, has lost all sense of reality about life. She needs to sit with someone like me, not an Oprah Winfrey-enabling interview fueling your victimhood. She needs someone to give her some perspective. I talked to

Narrator 54:11 (laughs)

Piers Morgan 54:11 ... earlier about perspective, where I say, you know, "Are you aware that when you preach to us about climate change and the environment and carbon footprint from Elton John's private plane..."... it doesn't sit very well. Are you aware that when you tweet, as they did on the day of her half-a-million-dollar baby shower in New York with all her celebrity friends, th- when you tweet from your Twitter account about poverty, it doesn't sit very well? Are you aware that when you preach about equality from your $11 million California mansion, it doesn't sit very well? Are you aware that when you rip our beloved prince away from the bosom of his family (laughs) and take him to America and woke him into submission, it doesn't sit very well with the British people? Are you aware that when you make very serious allegations of racism and callous disregard for suicidal thoughts, you actually have to produce some evidence to support it? Otherwise, everyone at the palace and the royal family gets smeared by association with those comments. Is she aware of any of those things? I don't know, but I'd love to ask those questions. She didn't get asked them by Oprah. Oprah just went, "What? What? What?" repeatedly, just believed everything she said. We now know at least 17 statements that Meghan Markle made in that interview were false. So am I still supposed to believe her? Is it a job-ending moment if I don't believe her? So, I think she's a piece of work. I think she... I was one of many people that she used along her, her path up the slippery ladder. That's fine. I don't care. I only met her once. Uh, but the way she treated me, on a very small level, is not dissimilar to the way she disowned her father. The guy that brought her up on his own for six, seven years, you know, he, he got disowned. He lives 70 miles away. She never sees him. He's never met his son-in-law. I mean, it's crazy stuff, right? She had one member of her entire family at the wedding. Where her family should have been on either side was Oprah Winfrey and George Clooney. It's like, do me a favor. So I see right through it. People still want to believe her. That's fine. People love Meghan Markle, think what's happened to Harry's great. That's fine too. I just don't agree, and I'm afraid you have to respect my right to have that opinion. Um, I'm getting about as bored with it as you are, to be honest with you.

Steven Bartlett 56:31 Yeah.

Piers Morgan 56:31 So I don't want to be defined by Meghan Markle, even though she was personally responsible for me losing a job that I, I loved. You know, she was the one who wrote to the boss of ITV on the Monday night that led to me leaving the next day, um, talking about being, "We're both women and we're both mothers. You've got to get rid of him." Do people think that's right? Is it right that a, that a person like Meghan Markle from her California mansion should lever a British television broadcaster out of a job he's enjoying, that viewers are enjoying him doing, in that way? I don't think so. Is it right that my right to free speech was so impinged that I had to leave a job if I didn't apologize for disbelieving someone who said false things? I don't think so. I thought the whole thing was ridiculous, as did Ofcom, the government regulator, months later, who ruled in my favor. So (laughs) I thought the whole thing, frankly, was preposterous. But in answer to your original question, let's do an interview, Meghan. Let me put all these questions to you and answer some difficult questions because I don't wish them harm. I don't wish them to be unhappy, but I hate what they've done between them to the royal family and the monarchy. I think it's been incredibly damaging.

Steven Bartlett 57:48 Do you ever, do you ever get concerned that, on a real human level, that some of the words you say, say for Meghan or Sam Smith or on Good Morning Britain, or even around, I don't know, is it Tessa who was the front cover of the magazine?

Piers Morgan 58:02 Yeah, the, the Cosmo cover girl, yeah.

Steven Bartlett 58:03 Cosmo cover. Do you ever... Has it ever crossed your mind that the words or tweets might actually hurt someone?

Piers Morgan 58:10 Do you think it's crossed...

Steven Bartlett 58:11 Did you, did you-

Piers Morgan 58:11 Well, has it crossed Meghan Markle's mind what she did to me?

Steven Bartlett 58:16 You know, like when the suicide... Meghan's-

Piers Morgan 58:17 I didn't cost her a job.

Steven Bartlett 58:18 Mm. You know when sh- like how she was saying she was suicidal.

Piers Morgan 58:21 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 58:22 Again, I don't want to go back to the whole point of mental health.

Piers Morgan 58:25 Mm.

Steven Bartlett 58:25 But did you ever, like, think, "Is this going to hurt this person" on a deeper level?

Piers Morgan 58:31 She, she said that two people at the palace, when she told them she had suicidal thoughts, said she couldn't get treatment because it would be damaging to the brand.

Steven Bartlett 58:40 Yeah.

Piers Morgan 58:40 I don't believe that, and no evidence has been brought forward to support it. Those are extremely incendiary allegations. In my view, weaponizing mental health and suicide to portray yourself as a victim. If Meghan Markle has proof that two senior members of the royal household refused to let her get help-

Steven Bartlett 59:01 Mm.

Piers Morgan 59:01 ... for suicidal thoughts, I want to know who they were, when they said it, and they shouldn't have those jobs.

Steven Bartlett 59:09 Hm.

Piers Morgan 59:09 But we are now a year and a bit later, no evidence. Similarly with her racism claims. One of them we knew immediately was untrue. It's completely untrue that her son was prevented from being a prince because of his skin color. Demonstrably untrue, factually wrong. And the other claim was that a member of the royal family expressed concern about Archie's skin color. Who was it and what did they say and what was the context in which they said it? Because the damage that she caused by calling the royal family a bunch of racists is incalculable, as we saw on the recent tour-

Steven Bartlett 59:43 Yeah.

Piers Morgan 59:43 ... of the Caribbean with William and Kate. So I don't think it's, I don't think it's harsh to want some evidence to support such incendiary claims. And when it comes to, do I use tough language? Yes, sometimes I think I do. But I don't regret doing that because I think they've been using pretty despicable language themselves.

Steven Bartlett 1:00:01 Have you ever regretted anything you've said in terms of...

Piers Morgan 1:00:04 Sometimes you think, "Oh..." I mean sometimes... Look, I encourage all my kids to be free thinkers, and sometimes they'll be on me. You know, like, "Dad, you went too far. You shouldn't say that." And we'll have a spirited debate about it, and sometimes they, they change my mind about stuff.

Steven Bartlett 1:00:18 Tell me one example.

Piers Morgan 1:00:18 I'm t- I knew you'd ask that.

Steven Bartlett 1:00:20 (laughs)

Piers Morgan 1:00:20 I'm trying to think. It has happened.

Steven Bartlett 1:00:21 Yeah. (laughs)

Piers Morgan 1:00:22 It has happened. I mean, they'll be saying how my... My middle son, Stanley, is a, an actor and photographer.He loves your podcast.

Steven Bartlett 1:00:28 He's my favorite son.

Piers Morgan 1:00:29 Yeah, exactly.

Steven Bartlett 1:00:31 (laughs)

Piers Morgan 1:00:31 He's on mine, all right? I have, all my sons are the same, and my daughter. Um, but he would say, "Now, Dad, stop talking about Meghan Markle."

Steven Bartlett 1:00:38 Yeah.

Piers Morgan 1:00:38 "Just don't bother. Don't, don't..." And he's right. There comes a point, there was a point.

Steven Bartlett 1:00:42 Yeah.

Piers Morgan 1:00:42 The problem is they make themselves newsworthy all the time, and my job is to talk about the news. And obviously I have a vested interest in the Markle debacle because it, it cost me my job, so I still feel that I have a sort of involvement in that, in that story. But he would certainly be saying, "No, don't... Move on to other stuff, you know, just do something else in this interview that's more interesting than Meghan bloody Markle." And he's right, actually. So that would be an example. I've had that conversation with him and my other sons. Uh, but we argue. We have, we have a WhatsApp group, me and my sons. If people read that, (laughs) I mean, they'd laugh because they hammer me, my kids, about all sorts of stuff. Sometimes we agree. A lot of the time we don't agree, and we have really vociferous arguments, but then we all go and have dinner and have fun together, and that's the way it should be. I want my kids to be independent-minded. I want them to challenge me. I want to challenge them, and sometimes it gets really heated.

Steven Bartlett 1:01:36 You

Steven Bartlett 1:01:37 know as a dad, when you're leading such a, a crusade, as I'm sure you'd call it, um, about free thinking and free speech-

Piers Morgan 1:01:43 Yeah.

Steven Bartlett 1:01:43 ... and these kinds of things, surely there's some kind of consequence for your kids, right? Because you're put... Not... I mean, fame, uh, i- in and of itself creates a consequence for children.

Piers Morgan 1:01:53 Well, they get picked on because they're my dad, but I always say to them, "You also get lots of benefits because you're my sons-

Steven Bartlett 1:01:58 Right.

Piers Morgan 1:01:59 ... and my children. All of you." Right? We go and have a... We have a wonderful time, right?

Steven Bartlett 1:02:04 Yeah.

Piers Morgan 1:02:04 We get treated like royalty in restaurants. We... You know, we have lovely holidays. We have lovely places in Beverly Hills where they come to us. All this is because of my fame, for want of a better word, and success, as, amid the failings. And I say, "You, you got to take life in totality." There'll be some annoying bits of being my children, and there'll be some very good benefits of being my children. You know, I got Cristiano Ronaldo, when I interviewed him, to do a, a video to my sons naming them all, right? They were like, "Oh my God!" But they wouldn't get that if I wasn't who I am, so they have a wonderful moment, and then they might get trolls, as in one case happened, making death threats to my eldest son on his Instagram. And I did take that to the police, because why should my sons be exposed to death threats from some disgusting troll? And it's interesting, the process, it's been over a year now, and it still hasn't come to court. It was a clear and demonstrable death threat specific to my son and me and to his mum, my ex-wife. And it's like, how can this be allowed to happen, and we're still a year, year and a half later and there's still no action against the perpetrator? I'm hoping there will be. It's going through the process, but shows you the frailty and weakness of social media that someone can make a specific death threat and nothing gets done for so long. So, that's a downside of being my... You know, when, when the Good Morning Britain thing blew up, all my sons were being abused on social media in the most horrific manner by a targeted mob of people normally who have the Be Kind hashtag in their bio, while spewing vile abuse at my kids simply for being my children. They didn't even agree with me about a lot of it.

Steven Bartlett 1:03:50 Outside of losing people, when does Piers Morgan cry?

Piers Morgan 1:03:56 Not often. I mean, really, the last time I cried was my grandmother's funeral in 2013. Before that... Pfff, I remember, I remember welling up at a movie. Um, I was trying to remember... I think it was... It was a movie that ends in a horrible fashion with a young son being shot dead. Can't remember which one it was. Um, I think it was Paul... Tom Hanks, maybe. Paul Newman. Something like... Can't remember the movie, but I was at the cinema, I was watching it, and it reminded me of my sons and when the kid gets killed in the kind of horrible Denis Montas movie, I did actually well up. And I was surprised. I don't normally. I don't well up at most things because I think also as a newspaper editor for 10 years, you get quite immune to shocking things. Even if they're real in your world, you get immune to it. You get used to dealing with it. I mean, you've had to cover stories like the Dunblane massacre or 9/11 or Diana's death or whatever it may be. These things are huge emotional things for the country, for the world, and over time you learn to be able to handle that and do your job. So you become quite tough, quite thick-skinned on the outside. Doesn't mean you don't feel things inside. You do.

Steven Bartlett 1:05:10 That's, that's what I'm curious about, because reading through what you've been through in your career-

Piers Morgan 1:05:12 Mm-hmm.

Steven Bartlett 1:05:12 ... the ups and the downs, I was like, if I was this man, I would have had... suffered with anxiety pretty badly, I think.

Piers Morgan 1:05:18 I don't get anxiety.

Steven Bartlett 1:05:19 Do you ever get anxious?

Piers Morgan 1:05:21 No.

Steven Bartlett 1:05:21 Never?

Piers Morgan 1:05:22 Not really, no. I don't, I don't get nervous. I don't get anxious. I'm very self-confident. I think I'm pretty self-aware, which I think is really important. I'm, I'm very aware of who I am, what I am, how I operate. I'm also aware over time the things that seem terrible in the moment very rarely are. Everything is survivable apart from death or, you know, some sort of terrible illness that you can't get rid of. Um, you know, the most frustrated I've probably ever been was I got long COVID, uh, last year after I got the Delta variant. So I had a week of very high fever and stuff, then got six, seven months of long COVID. No smell, no taste, endless fatigue, no energy, which for me was like the worst thing. You know, I'd broke an ankle the summer before and I didn't mind that too much. It was annoying physically. I couldn't do golf and stuff like that, but I was able to function as myself. But when you lose energy, it's a really interesting thing. I, I found that really debilitating and in a way quite depressing, you know, over time, as the months went on, because no doctor could tell you what the cure is.And I have great sympathy with all the millions of people out there with a form of long COVID. It's a very brutal virus. Even if you've been, as I was, fully vaccinated, it can cause you a lot of problems. But as I sat there, month after month after month, with the energy not coming back, and no taste, couldn't drink my favorite fine wine, only drank terrible wine, 'cause the sharp tastes I could actually just about make out. So you're down to your Liebfraumilchen, really awful Pinot Grigios, as opposed to my normal, you know, Château Latour.

Steven Bartlett 1:06:57 (laughs)

Piers Morgan 1:06:57 It was a, it was a difficult moment. (laughs)

Steven Bartlett 1:07:00 Stop wallowing. (laughs) Stop wallowing, Piers. (laughs)

Piers Morgan 1:07:01 These are first-world problems and I am wallowing.

Steven Bartlett 1:07:04 (laughs)

Piers Morgan 1:07:04 Um, but it made me realize that if you've got good health, you've got, uh, a wealth, really, far better than any actual physical wealth. That really, if you've got your health, make the most of it. I've got a lot of sympathy for people who have debilitating illnesses, either mental or physical. That's why I always try in the debate about mental health to park the two things. I know people who've got clinical depression. It's an awful thing, and they need constant help and constant medical attention and treatment, and drugs and so on. I've got great sympathy for people in that position. In a way, when I had the long COVID, it, it, it felt like a, I- I guess, this sort of brain fog that comes with it, which anyone who's had it will know what I'm talking about, and if you don't, you just wonder what the fuss is all about, but you get this kind of brain fog that sits in your head. And I'd imagine that it's on a much worse level for people with clinical depression. I can kind of understand a bit more now about what that must feel like. But that's not the same as feeling anxious about normal life stuff. It's the levels of anxiety are completely out of control. So I don't get anxious about things. I don't get nervous about stuff. I get excited. I get that kind of adrenaline, excitement.

Steven Bartlett 1:08:13 Excitement.

Piers Morgan 1:08:14 Nervous excitement.

Steven Bartlett 1:08:15 Piers Morgan Uncensored,

Steven Bartlett 1:08:16 tell me then, why, how are you finding your excitement in doing this, having l- had such a long career? What is it about this new show that's exciting you?

Piers Morgan 1:08:25 It's brand new. It's starting from scratch. I had lots of offers to do established shows, established networks around the world, and I thought, "You know what? I like this idea." I like going back to work for Rupert Murdoch, who's been a great mentor for me in my life. He's 91. I had dinner with him here in LA a couple of nights ago, and he just, his brain at 91 is just staggering. And his extraordinary drive to always be thinking of a next thing. He'd just been down to SpaceX and was enth- so enthused by what Elon Musk is doing with that. He never looks back. He just all- only ever looks forward. It's very contagious. And he believes completely in free speech. And it- it's made him a very polarizing figure himself, as it has with me, but he believes completely in that. And I find that intoxicating. So going back to where it started, with the person who gave me my first really big media job, uh, with a global platform. So no one's really tried doing a daily show that airs in the UK, the US, and Australia, three different continents at the same time. And my gut feeling is the world's a small place with debate now. That actually, we've got to a place now where, because of social media, whether you're in Sydney, London, New York, you're all having the same arguments. Everyone's talking about the Will Smith slap, or Ukraine and Zelenskyy and Putin, or Trump, whatever it may be. It's the same conversation, it's the same people being had around the world, and I think what people wanna know is not what's happening, 'cause they're seeing that all the time, they're getting an overload of information. They want to know what to think about it. And I'm in the opinion business. I'm gonna tell people what I think about stuff. I don't expect you to agree with me, but I do wanna challenge what you may be thinking yourself. I want to be firm about what I believe about situations, and if you wanna persuade me I'm wrong, come on. I'm gonna have people from the left, from the right. I don't wanna be a partisan show. I don't park myself into the right or left at all. Uh, I think I'm a voice for common sense. I see it. I don't actually think I'm that controversial in terms of my opinions. I think anyone who read my book knows that. Uh, I think I'm pretty much on the side of the 80% majority in most places. But it's gonna be a challenge. And it, you know, I'm hoping it will work. I'll give it everything I've got. And it's a big, big challenge, probably the biggest I've ever had. But I find that exciting. I love starting from scratch. Brand new studio we built in Ealing out of rubble, literally, out of concrete slabs, we built this amazing high-tech studio. Um, I've just been on a global tour to Australia, to America, and it was so exciting, the energy that I was getting everywhere about this. There's a lot of support from this massive company to make it work, but ultimately, it's the Wayne Gretzky thing. Maybe I'll miss. We'll see. But it won't be through lack of trying, and it won't be through lack of confidence, and it won't be through lack of self-belief that I have that this is the right show for the right moment. The public wants someone to cancel cancel culture, and because of what happened with Good Morning Britain, I became, for