My truth about the end of the Piers show: AMANDA PLATELL praises Piers Morgan for supporting her when her brother and parents died
Former ITV Good Morning Britain presenter Piers Morgan and I have known each other for decades.
I wouldn’t say he’s a ‘bestie’, not the first go-to mate in the world, yet we have steadfastly remained in contact.
He has been there for me not so much through the good times — but always during the bad. And as our careers collided and drifted apart, we have stayed friends.
It’s not all been a bed of roses. I have had only three screaming matches in my life, and two were with Piers. They were when we made three series of The Morgan And Platell show on Channel 4 in 2004. We fought like wildcats.
We fought like wildcats when we made three series of The Morgan And Platell show on Channel 4 in 2004
He could be insufferable and irascible. And I’m ashamed to admit, on occasions and with extreme provocation, so could I. He says Marmite, I say Vegemite.
Now, with laughter, we recall how back then we were ‘telly newbies’ — novices and nobodies — and that I was ‘his first Susanna’, a reference to his now ex-GMB co-host Susanna Reid.
Fast forward to when Piers stormed out of the studio this week after declaring he didn’t believe a word of what Meghan Markle said in her Oprah Winfrey interview, and it’s front-page news. But I’d vouch he spoke for many who watched it.
In fact, a poll for this newspaper showed most people do not believe Meghan’s outrageous claim that the Royal Family were racist and think the couple should be stripped of their titles.
As someone who knows Piers, I’m not surprised he spoke out — he doesn’t keep his views to himself. But I applaud his courage in doing so — for telling his truth, to adopt H&M’s La-La-Land parlance, rather than be silenced.
And I find it shameful of ITV that he lost his job for speaking his mind.
As to the accusation that Piers is some kind of Right-wing monster, insensitive to the sufferings of others, especially over mental health issues, I would just like to say my truth as I know it.
As someone who knows Piers, I’m not surprised he spoke out. I find it shameful of ITV that he lost his job for speaking his mind
When my brother Michael died in 1996 and I was suffering from severe depression yet had to get back to work, Piers helped and counselled me without being asked, and was kindness itself.
He had nothing to gain — we were both editors on rival newspapers — but he was solicitous about checking I was OK.
Again, when my parents died together two years ago, he was one of the first on the phone to me in Australia as I prepared for their funeral, sending messages of solace as I tried to deal with my loss.
Piers need take no lectures on compassion and kindness from anyone — and certainly not from the self-serving Sussexes.
I’ve no idea what the future holds for breast-beating, woefully woke Harry and Megs. But I’m certain of two things about my friend Piers: we haven’t heard the last of him because he is such a talented, larger-than-life broadcaster — and Morgan and Platell won’t have had their last row.
Royal Oprah watch
Despite the Queen’s post-Oprah Winfrey edict that the Royal Family would not speak out about Harry and Meghan’s accusations of racism and neglect, Prince William could not contain himself on Thursday.
‘We are very much not a racist family,’ he declared, and revealed he had not spoken to his brother since the incendiary interview.
Harry believes that time will heal the rift between him and William.
But after the way he and Meghan trashed his brother’s wife, I’d humbly suggest that Hell will freeze over before William takes him back into the fold.
Gorgeous shots of the Sussexes showing off their ‘rescue chickens’ to Oprah in their £11 million mansion, although can I have been the only one to have spotted a lack of diversity among the chooks? Most of those on camera were white.
Meanwhile, with Harry bleating on about the horrid royal lifestyle he was brought up in, his ‘beloved’ grandfather Philip has spent his 26th night in hospital, apart from his wife of 74 years.
What a cruel blow Meghan’s Prince has dealt the Duke of Edinburgh — the man the Queen’s described as ‘quite simply my strength and stay’ — with this petulant and unprovoked assault on his family.
Home, not so sweet home
Ghislaine Maxwell puts her multi-million-pound pied-a-terre in London’s Belgravia on the market to fund her lawyer’s fees while awaiting charges that she procured young women for the billionaire paedophile Jeffrey Epstein.
Maxwell’s spokesman said she was sad to sell as it ‘held happy memories’ for her. Perhaps not so happy for Virginia Roberts Giuffre, who claims that as a 17-year-old she was pressured to have sex there with Prince Andrew, an allegation he denies.
Katy is blooming with her little Daisy
Cradling their six-month-old daughter Daisy Dove while frolicking in Hawaii with fiancé Orlando Bloom, singer Katy Perry is a magnificent role model for young mums everywhere.
She’s not the size zero she once was, but her glorious, curvaceous new-mum body is testimony to the fact she’s the woman she wants to be.
Some of us belonging to the dwindling Anglican community despaired on hearing Meghan’s claim that the Archbishop of Canterbury held a ‘private’ wedding ceremony for her and Harry before their £32 million public and mostly taxpayer-funded nuptials.
As a bog standard churchgoer, I was told that under no circumstances could I ever be ‘married’ in my church as I was a divorcee.
As Meghan was. Crikey, I can’t get married again in church, while Megs says she got two in the same week.
That’s got to be the ultimate Bogof — buy one, get one free.
Adele, worth £150 million, has quietly finalised her divorce from former charity boss Simon Konecki.
There’s been no bickering over spousal support, which he could have demanded, and they’ve sorted things out privately through mediation, quietly dividing their assets with the priority of raising together and protecting their eight-year-old son Angelo.
Despite all the sadness of the break-up, one suspects that — just as she sang in her hit Someone Like You — she wishes ‘nothing but the best’ for Simon.
Westminster wars
The only explanation for Boris’s derisory initial offer of a 1 per cent pay increase for NHS staff is that, having been hospitalised with Covid, he is now suffering the long-term effects, which include ‘cognitive impairment’ or ‘brain fog’.
How else could he justify spending billions on an unworkable Test and Trace system, while our frontline NHS workers go through the hell of the pandemic.
Commons leader Jacob Rees-Mogg says the estimated £20 billion refurbishment of Parliament is ‘for the birds’ and that we cannot turn Westminster into Disneyland. Surely we’re already there, Boris and his fiancée Carrie as the bickering Mickey and Minnie Mouse, Keir Starmer as Goofy (with a net poll rating of zero) and with tough times and cuts ahead, Chancellor Rishi Sunak morphing into Scrooge.
A rare moment of quiet contemplation as Labour’s Jess Phillips read out the names of the 118 women killed by men in the past year, following the disappearance of Sarah Everard who set off across Clapham Common in South London to walk home but never made it. Yet amid such sadness, as Phillips argued, this is not a time to cast men as villains. We need to work together to keep women safe, as well as the many more men who are murdered on our streets.
Unfair to octopuses
Hedge fund boss Crispin Odey, worth £825 million, is cleared of assaulting a younger colleague who dubbed him the ‘octopus’ saying he had wandering hands.
He confessed he tried to lure her into bed having invited her to his marital home. And he conceded after his acquittal of sexual assault that his amorous behaviour had caused ‘enormous strain’ on his marriage to his wife Nichola, who was pregnant with their third child at the time.
We must applaud the fact an innocent man walked free.
But amid all this mayhem, perhaps Mr Odey would do well to reflect on the life cycle of male octopuses: they mate with only one female before they die.
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