Piers Morgan (6 page)

I
t was just over a year since he’d taken the editor’s chair at the
News Of The World
and, whatever anyone might think of him personally, Piers Morgan had certainly turned his paper into a talking point. While the critics and colleagues continued to squabble over what should make the pages of a newspaper, his circulation figures spoke for themselves. In his first year, circulation was up 1.6 per cent. Clearly, the readership approved of what he was doing, even if there was caution elsewhere. And the plaudits were flooding in: Editor of the Year, Newspaper of the Year and Scoop(s) of the Year.

But Piers showed no sign of letting up. Another couple in the news at that time were Charles Spencer (Princess Diana’s brother) and his then wife, Victoria. They were about to separate, and Victoria, a former model, was known to have had all sorts of past travails with drink and drugs. She was now being treated for an eating disorder and the
News Of The World
pictured her at a clinic where
she was receiving treatment, leading the intemperate Earl Spencer to dub the tabloid press ‘hypocritical and evil’. Back then, no one knew that he was repeatedly unfaithful to his wife and would go on to develop quite a reputation because of the way he treated women.

The couple were separating after six years of marriage and, because Charles was Diana’s brother, there was intense interest in their every move. People would sell stories about them, and so, to test one particular acquaintance under suspicion, Lord Spencer informed him that he was leaving to work at a television station in New York. The story duly made its way into the press, specifically the front page of the
News Of The World,
whereupon Spencer gleefully rang the paper and told reporters they had been fooled. He had actually written a letter to the person in question, claiming that he and his four children were relocating to New York to see what happened, and was delighted when the entirely false news was printed in full.

‘Over the past few weeks it has become apparent to my wife and I that we have a friend who has been informing the
News Of The World,
’ a vindicated Spencer told the Press Association. ‘To find out who this was, we decided to release false information to the main suspect. My wife and I are both sorry that he has sought to gain from the
News Of The World
rather than respect his friendship with my wife. He was able, with his boyfriend, to take hospitality repeatedly over the past few years and has repaid us in this shabby way. I am delighted we have found out who it was, but I am saddened for my wife that one of her closest
friends has turned out to be a traitor. I don’t take any pleasure in trying to catch people out like this.’

As soon as the first edition of the paper appeared, the
News Of The World
was alerted and hastily moved the story back to page 13. Naturally, this was a highly embarrassing episode and, clearly ruffled, Piers sought to play down the damage. The newspaper had published the story ‘in good faith’ he said, before adding, ‘I am extremely surprised that Lord Spencer should involve his ailing wife and his children in such an elaborate attempt to deceive a newspaper. He has also quite deliberately attracted a whole new avalanche of publicity at a time when he himself has repeatedly pleaded for privacy on behalf of Lady Victoria.’

There was history here: six months after Lord Spencer married Victoria, he had a brief fling with a former girlfriend – cartoonist Sally Ann Lasson – the news of which duly appeared in the
News Of The World
. That had been before Piers’ time, but Spencer had obviously neither forgiven nor forgotten. Not only was it embarrassing, it was bad timing, too. The general feeling was that Piers was pushing it to the limits at the
News Of The World,
running stories that could barely be said to be in the public interest and shining a highly unfavourable light on the industry as a whole. And then, to make matters worse, he was held to account by the Press Complaints Commission and publicly rebuked by his proprietor, Rupert Murdoch.

The cause of all this was, again, Lord Spencer; he was livid when pictures of Victoria, believed to be suffering from bulimia, attending a private clinic in Surrey had appeared.
It was also thought she might have a continuing problem with drink. Lord Spencer complained, successfully, to the PCC; they upheld his complaint and the PCC’s chairman Lord Wakeham sent a personal letter to Murdoch to bring the matter to his attention, something only done in ‘severe or calculated’ breaches of the newspaper Code of Practice.

Rupert Murdoch was a complicated figure himself. For a start, there was a certain amount of controversy that one person, who was not even British, could own such a huge chunk of the British media – five newspapers (at times) and a large part of a television station, BSkyB. Second, it was often averred that his newspapers had a Republican agenda; Murdoch himself was a Republican, no doubt about that, but for his publications to have taken such a stance would have caused huge controversy – and this was a story with a royal connection. Third, there was still the issue about a privacy law and Murdoch did not want to see one of his papers blamed for bringing it in, and so he acted quickly.

Piers Morgan ‘had gone over the top’, he said in a statement. ‘This company will not tolerate its papers bringing into disrepute the best practices of popular journalism, which we seek to follow. While I will always support worthwhile investigative journalism as a community responsibility, it is clear that the young man went over the top. Mr Morgan has assured me that his forthcoming apology to Countess Spencer on this matter is severe and without reservation. I have no hesitation in making public this remonstration and I have reminded
Mr Morgan forcefully of his responsibility to the Code to which he as editor – and all our journalists – subscribe in their terms of employment.’

For Piers, this was a serious and very public humiliation. The emphasis on youth could not have gone down well and it also emerged that wiser counsel within the newspaper had urged him not to publish the picture. He had ignored that sage advice and now found himself publicly brought to book. Piers had ruffled more than a few feathers in the course of his climb up the greasy pole and, as someone who not only set the news agenda for the past 15 months or so, but had also won a handful of awards for doing so, he was unaccustomed to being rapped over the knuckles so publicly, like a naughty schoolboy. The gloating from other quarters that accompanied it didn’t go down well, either.

‘I think Mr Murdoch is to be congratulated for taking such a strong line,’ said a clearly pleased Lord Wakeham. ‘I think papers are taking the Code increasingly seriously.’ He went on to announce that the PCC had considered looking into the story involving Richard Spring, but could take no action because Spring understandably wanted to let the matter drop and had therefore not issued a formal complaint.

‘While the commission is unable to make a judgment on this case, it also raises questions about the manner in which the
News of the World
has recently applied the public interest criteria of the Code,’ he stated.

And Piers appeared duly chastened. ‘The decision to
publish the story and the photograph of Countess Spencer was mine, and mine alone,’ he insisted. ‘I am sending my sincere apologies to the Countess for any distress that our actions may have caused at an obviously difficult time for her. Mr Murdoch has made his feelings on this subject very clear to me.’

This was a quite different take from what appeared in the
News Of The World
after Spencer first made his complaint. There, over a full page devoted to the story, was the headline
HYPOCRISY OF THE ARROGANT EARL SPENCER … HIS PRIVACY CAN BE INVADED FOR CASH,
after which followed a list of the various occasions on which Spencer had given exclusives to magazines such as
Hello!.

The PCC was not impressed. ‘While this affects the extent to which he may now be entitled to privacy in respect of particular aspects of his own life, we do not believe that this leaves the press free to report on any matter regarding the Countess,’ it stated.

To make matters worse, Piers was then threatened with being sent to prison, albeit on the back of yet another crisis. The reason was a
News Of The World
exclusive exposing a drugs dealer, complete with his name, age, occupation and the town where he lived; the problem was that the dealer was, in fact, awaiting trial for criminal charges, and the piece was therefore in contempt of court – his details should never have been published. So, could matters get any worse? It seemed they could.

Piers was now truly having to take on board Kelvin MacKenzie’s contention that, if an editor was prepared to
dish it out, he should also be able to take it in a big way; he was accustomed to training a lens on the love lives of the big names of the day but rather less used to having the tables turned. He had publicly admitted that he was separated from his wife and, until June 1995, a few weeks after he’d been chastised by Murdoch, that had been that, but then a bizarre story emerged, linking him with a woman called Sheryl Kyle, now rather better known as Sheryl Gascoigne. Back then, she was Paul Gascoigne’s on-off girlfriend and would later become his wife. Piers was unavailable for comment to the
London Evening Standard’
s ‘Londoner’s Diary’ where the story first appeared and the newspaper had to content itself with a comment from his mother.

‘I expect mums are the last to know,’ Gabrielle
cheerfully
observed.

Max Clifford also managed to get himself involved, announcing, ‘Piers and Sheryl were making a record together.’

With all the criticism he was receiving from every side, Piers refused to take it on the chin and flew into a rage. Just a day later, the ‘Londoner’s Diary’ printed a retraction, telling readers that Piers was furious – as the story was altogether untrue, especially the part about his making an album – and relaying that he had told them the news would upset his estranged wife and they’d had no business contacting his family. It might have seemed a bit rich, coming from the editor of the
News of the World,
but Piers was clearly fed up. Sheryl, too, confirmed that there was no truth in the story whatsoever.

Meanwhile, he was attempting to get on with business as usual, which that week involved buying up the story of Divine Brown, the prostitute who had recently been arrested alongside actor Hugh Grant, thus blowing out of the water Grant’s persona as the ultimate English gentleman. The
News Of The World’
s rival paper, the
People
, then accused Piers of chequebook journalism, something he hotly denied. ‘What happened is that our reporter was on a Los Angeles TV show and was asked what he thought the story could be worth,’ he explained. ‘He speculated that it could be worth up to $100,000 or so, but we didn’t pay anything like that – it was not money that got the story, it was the speed at which we got to her. We used brilliant investigative journalism techniques to track her down.’

This wasn’t what he was used to, though: Piers had been doing so well for so long that to have people accuse him of entrapment (Richard Spring), intruding on the privacy of a sick woman (Victoria Spencer) and now using a fat chequebook rather than investigative techniques to land that week’s scoop must have been galling. He was more accustomed to being the Boy Wonder, not someone publicly chastised by Rupert Murdoch for bringing the profession into disrepute. Naturally, he wasn’t enjoying his editorship one jot at this stage.

People were beginning to tease him about recent events, too. When it was revealed that Sheryl Kyle was pregnant with Paul Gascoigne’s child, the
Guardian’
s diarist rang to ask him to congratulate the happy couple. Piers didn’t call back, although he did so the very next day.

‘The
Daily Mail
has confronted Gazza with the fact that I’m the father,’ he said. ‘But look, I’ve only met Sheryl twice in my life. It’s so preposterous that I’m finding it quite funny [but] Gazza’s in a terrible state. It’s splendid that the papers want to delve into my private life, but they really should leave him alone. Listen, if the baby was mine, don’t you think I’d be the first to buy myself up?’

It was all stated in as joking a fashion as he could manage (and this was far from the last time that rival newspapers would take an in-depth look at his personal life), but Piers had clearly come under a great deal of pressure: to go from
wunderkind
to whipping boy was not a pleasurable experience. There was an increasing sense that something had to give, and so it did.

The news broke towards the end of August 1995: Piers Morgan had resigned from the
News Of The World
and was to edit the
Daily Mirror
instead. Again, the hand of Kelvin MacKenzie could clearly be seen to be moving behind the scenes; after a brief spell at BSkyB, he himself had moved to the Mirror Group, where he was running the television interests. He would have understood just how humiliating Piers found it to be so publicly ticked off and he also knew that his protégé, while a maverick, was brilliant at getting scoops and attracting publicity, both for himself and his papers.

And so the deal was struck: the current editor of the
Mirror
– Colin Myler – became managing editor of both the
Daily
and
Sunday Mirror,
a management role rather than an editorial one, and the Boy Wonder signed up
to the team. ‘I have been offered the editorship of the
Daily Mirror
and I have accepted,’ announced Piers in a somewhat chilly statement. ‘I have given in my notice.’

At this, Rupert Murdoch was livid: just a couple of months earlier, he’d been slapping Piers Morgan down and now here was his editor doing pretty much the same in return. Initially, it seemed as if he would try to force him to stay – after all, he had between a year and eighteen months left on his contract and it seemed News International was in no mood to release him.