Читать книгу Piers Morgan - The Biography - Emily Herbert - Страница 7

Piers Morgan was a young man with a lot of energy that would soon stand him in good stead. Already he was doing well, learning his trade on the local South London Press, but he also showed a knack for making the most of his situation that would pitch him into a role on one of the most successful newspapers of the day.

‘He was a natural,’ explained Joan Mulcaster, then associate editor of the Sutton Herald. ‘He was very, very bright, and right from the start he grasped what the job required. He had this knack of being able to get old ladies to talk to him. Once he was sent on a story, he was sure to succeed.’ The only problem, according to Mulcaster, was that Piers didn’t get on with the then editor, ‘because he was too good, and he knew it.’ He was clearly destined for greater things.

There was the hard news angle for a start, which began with the Brixton riots. ‘I saw the pressure building in communities,’ Piers told The Times in 1999. ‘There’s a similar situation now. I think there’ll be real payback. In the cities you have got total lawlessness on the streets. It’s not necessarily there in the figures, but in terms of an underclass of kids abandoned by the establishment and by their fathers in some cases. The gangs are all they have. Thirty kids stabbed on the streets of London last year doesn’t tell me crime is getting any better.’

As well as interviewing colourful locals, he was sharp enough to see that celebrities who did pantomime at Wimbledon’s theatre – among them Cliff Richard, Rowan Atkinson and Frank Bruno – were of interest to a far wider audience than those served by the paper he was working on. It wasn’t long before he secured little chats with them, wrote them up into a story and then sold them on to the national press.

He started doing the odd shift for the national papers, too, after Joan Mulcaster introduced him to a former Sutton Herald reporter, Kevin O’Sullivan, who was now working for the Sun. ‘You don’t want to touch the shit I’m writing,’ O’Sullivan told him, but Piers, who was made of sterner stuff, responded, ‘I’m not too proud.’ And so it was that he found himself doing the odd shift on Britain’s biggest-selling daily (and dropping the ‘Pughe’ part of his surname – he said it made his by-line too long, but in fact it was completely out of character with working for the Sun).

And it wasn’t long before he came to the attention of Kelvin MacKenzie, then editor of the Sun. At the time, MacKenzie was one of the best-known and most influential editors; his Sun was responsible for such headlines as STICK IT UP YOUR JUNTA, FREDDIE STARR ATE MY HAMSTER and UP YOURS, DELORS. MacKenzie, too, had a brash personality which made itself felt in the newspaper he ran. In short, there could be no better place for a fiercely ambitious journalist with the popular touch to begin making his name.

MacKenzie quickly hired Piers, and after a year he became editor of the ‘Bizarre’ column and displayed a gift for self-promotion that took even fellow journalists by surprise. It was a time of massive change: the late eighties was seeing considerably less interest in the established fodder of the gossip columns, the aristocracy (with the enormous exception of Diana, Princess of Wales), and far more excitement about celebrities. ‘Bizarre’, launched several years earlier by another extremely colourful and brilliant journalist, John Blake, was a gossip column focusing on celebrities and was to kick-start a spectacular career.

What Piers did was breathtakingly simple: he put himself in the photo with the stars. Instead of just photographing a pop star talking about his latest single, he would run a picture of himself talking to the star about his latest single. This manoeuvre had two outcomes: it put Piers on the same level as the pop star, making him out to be another member of the star’s celebrity world, while at the same time causing him to become massively recognisable to readers. Few journalists ever become visible to the wider world outside their immediate profession and become famous in their own right, but Kelvin MacKenzie had achieved this and now his young protégé was having a go at it, too.

According to Piers, it was all Kelvin’s idea, and started with a picture of him with Bros, the pop-star duo who were famous at the time. ‘I was amazed when Kelvin used the picture giant-sized on the centre spread,’ he said. ‘That was when he said to me, “Right, get alongside all the stars. I don’t care how you do it, just do it.” All I did was carry it out.

‘I became the Friend of the Stars, a rampant egomaniac, pictured all the time with famous people – Madonna, Stallone, Bowie, Paul McCartney – hundreds of them,’ he continued. ‘It was shameless as they didn’t know me from Adam. The Sun had had a bad time after losing an action with Elton John, but this was harmless and funny. The publicity people from the record companies were all in on the joke. I got a letter one day from someone on HMS Campbeltown, saying I was appalling. Everyone on board got in a rage when they saw my face – so I printed that letter in full, in the column. I had four great years, travelling the world.’

And the stars themselves were usually only too happy to play along. They knew the deal: they were getting as much publicity as anyone, which could only benefit their careers and it certainly wasn’t doing anyone any harm. On one occasion, Piers was shown presenting a platinum disc to Gloria Estefan: ‘We should be giving you this, Piers, after all the support you have given us over the last two years,’ said Gloria’s husband, Emilio.

‘Thanks for everything,’ added Gloria. ‘You and the Sun have been wonderful to us.’

‘As I pointed out to rock’s most charming couple,’ wrote Piers, ‘that’s what friends are for.’

And it was all down to MacKenzie. The two men formed an instant bond. Piers went on to describe him (accurately) as a ‘dangerous genius’, while Kelvin encouraged his twenty-three-year-old hot shot to come up with outrageous stories and to push himself in the frame alongside whoever he was interviewing. ‘The headline instantly became “Piers Morgan 687pt, Bizarre 4pt”,’ Kelvin said in later years, referring to the size of Piers’ by-line compared to that of the column itself, but his editor was happy with what he was doing, as was Piers himself. It was also at this stage that Piers first made the acquaintance of Max Clifford, one of the best-known publicists of the age and with whom he was to have many dealings in the years ahead.

It was this trio – Piers, Kelvin and Max – who came up with one bombshell after another. ‘What was different about that period was that the Sun under Kelvin MacKenzie suddenly decided to take celebrities like pop stars, footballers and all the rest of them, pull them from the back pages and the gossip columns on to the front page as news stories,’ Piers later told the Guardian. ‘Max was the easiest guy to deal with. He’d say, “Look, mate, a nod’s as good as a wink. He only hit him once, but if you want it three times, that’s fine.” Nowadays the PCC [Press Complaints Commission] would frown on that. From Max’s point of view, it makes it slightly trickier.’

Not that it really had to be a bombshell; by now, the public was completely obsessed by celebrity, so much so that practically anything to do with anyone on TV would sell. ‘A typical Max “Bizarre” story used to involve an EastEnders’ star having a meal at the Red Fort curry house, then having a fight at Xenon nightclub – all of which he represented,’ recalled Piers. ‘It was much more lawless then. The idea that someone like Max could create the entire story around his people, it wouldn’t be as easy now.’

It was also at this stage of his career that Piers first became involved with the Press Complaints Commission (PCC) because inevitably his attitude towards his job could be summed up as ‘absolutely anything goes’ but it was all invaluable experience. By now, he was building up contacts, learning his trade and earning a name for himself into the bargain – and all while still in his twenties.

This period also shaped Piers’ attitude towards the editorship of a newspaper. Kelvin MacKenzie, one of the most fearless editors of his generation, took no prisoners and his style would clearly influence his protégé in the future. Given the nature of their professions, both men were adamant that they themselves were fair game and were prepared to push the boat out in a way other editors refused to do. What’s more, both paid the price one way or another – MacKenzie eventually had to leave the Sun, while Piers was very publicly sacked from the Mirror – but both raised their heads above the parapet in a way few other editors would have dared.

‘I think that, if you are a tabloid editor, then you deserve everything you get, frankly. I have no right to privacy,’ Kelvin told the Independent many years later, as he looked back over his career. ‘You have got to understand where you lie in the ladder of life. I have absolutely no doubts about where I am. It would be somewhere near the bottom. It may be at the bottom. I always thought when editing the Sun that the greatest journalistic act I could perform would be actually exposing myself so you’d end up with a headline: SUN EDITOR IN THREE-IN-A BED SCANDAL. And you’d start with an intro: ‘Kelvin MacKenzie wept with shame last night as it was revealed…’ I think the idea that editors are in some way part of the Establishment is just plain wrong. I sort of drifted in and out of that. The idea that the Prime Minister would ask you what you thought about something is truly, truly absurd.’

In fact, a number of prime ministers were to ask both MacKenzie and his young protégé for their advice because the other attribute they shared was the common touch (in other words, what the man on the Clapham omnibus might think). Each had a good sense of what their readers wanted (although in both cases there were errors: on Kelvin’s part, most notoriously in the case of the Sun’s coverage of the Hillsborough disaster, and then there were the faked Iraqi War pictures in Piers’ case). Neither was in any way remotely deferential to any sort of authority and both were only too happy to challenge the existing status quo. Their political views were broadly similar, too, despite the fact that Piers would go on to edit the Sun’s rival and its opposite number on the political spectrum: Kelvin was extremely right wing, while Piers was mildly right wing. Both made waves, both got what they wanted and, even outside the narrow world in which they lived, both were often talked about. And Piers was well aware who he had to thank for his success: ‘I owe it all to Kelvin,’ he stated, when he eventually left the Sun. ‘He’s always been there for me.’

In the midst of making a name for himself professionally, Piers also married for the first time in July 1991, in Hampshire. The lady in question was a nurse – Marion Shalloe – and she was to bear him three sons. Being in his mid-twenties, he was perhaps a little young to settle down and, indeed, the marriage would not last but at this stage it seemed as if he was determined to do everything faster, younger and better than anyone else. He was a married man, already becoming a famous journalist and, two years later, the couple’s first son, Spencer William, was born in 1993.

But Piers’ lifestyle was not conducive to settling down. To write his column – and, indeed, for the best part of the two decades that he would spend on Fleet Street – he had to put in unfeasibly long hours, on top of which, as a celebrity gossip columnist, he had to make regular appearances at numerous show-business events. Marion is one of the few subjects that Piers is a little reticent about, although he has talked in the past about being a less than perfect husband and also owned up to feelings of guilt. He was, after all, brought up as a practising Catholic and divorce goes against his beliefs.

But back at ‘Bizarre’, he was going from strength to strength and proving that he could quite effortlessly attract publicity: for example, as far back as 1989, Ben Elton publicly criticised him for implying they were friends. (In fact, Piers pretty much implied that he was friends with everyone in those days.)

Almost everyone, that is; a couple of years later, Donnie Wahlberg of the pop group New Kids On The Block wore a T-shirt emblazoned with the legend ‘Piers Morgan Sucks’ on stage. ‘In case you didn’t know this dude Piers Morgan, he writes for a newspaper called the Sun,’ Donnie informed his audience. ‘He’s always slagging us off and putting us down – his stuff should be ignored. You shouldn’t read what he writes in that newspaper.’

Piers, ever ready to indulge in a feud even then, rose to the challenge. ‘Donnie’s sense of humour is obviously as atrocious as his singing,’ he said smoothly. ‘I can’t understand it. I thought we were great friends. Perhaps this has something to do with our recent reports that the New Kids and Mr Wahlberg in particular were washed up. I hope he doesn’t intend being a comedian when, or if, he grows up.’

But it was not the end of that particular saga. In an excellent demonstration of the way in which Piers managed over and over to make himself the centre of the story, nine months later he was pictured with Donnie again. This time, the latter was full of remorse and contrition. ‘I’ve done some stupid things in the last two years, but now I’ve grown up,’ said Donnie. ‘I did it on the spur of the moment, because all the British fans seemed to hate you. Now I realise they all read your column, every damned one of them. It’s the same with me. A lot of people say they hate me, but they all buy my records.’

As a mea culpa, this was some going, but Donnie clearly realised that he was at a stage in his career when he could do with some support from the press. Two decades on, with Piers about to become one of the most powerful men on American television (where Donnie still appears), he was clearly right.

Piers was clearly in his element; there were now reports of Irish singing star Sinéad O’Connor ringing up to talk to him about her marriage breakdown. In 1992, there was one bizarre (appropriately enough) incident involving Madonna. Piers devoted most of a page to the ‘world’s best singer and columnist’, who had turned up in a limo for a chat at his office in Wapping. A couple of days later came an apology from Piers for having been duped by a lookalike and a few days after that came the claim that he himself had hired the lookalike and the apology was a joke.

When Piers was required to play dirty, he would do so. In 1993, the singer Holly Johnson of Frankie Goes To Hollywood revealed that he was HIV positive, something much feared and little understood back then. Piers was one of the first with the story but he hadn’t got it himself. Rather, Holly gave an interview to The Times Magazine – but The Times, like the Sun, was owned by Rupert Murdoch and based in the same premises in Wapping, East London. Piers might have been coy about how he’d stumbled on his exclusive but it wasn’t so hard to guess.

He was also extremely good at being in the right place at the right time. May 1993 saw him in Monte Carlo at the World Music Awards, where he had a ringside view of a spat between supermodels Carla Bruni (now married to President Nicolas Sarkozy) and Claudia Schiffer over Prince Albert of Monaco. According to Piers, Carla won. Headed up by a headline that read: I SAW SCHEMING CARLA NICK CLAUDIA’S PRINCE, the piece also had a large strapline, which read: ‘Piers Morgan is at the next table as the catfight fur flies’.

Again, he managed to place himself at the centre of the story: ‘Supermodels Claudia Schiffer and Carla Bruni fought like cat and cat over Prince Albert of Monaco at the World Music Awards in Monte Carlo,’ he rather breathlessly began. A piece then followed about the two women shooting daggers at one another. Claudia, who had been dating Prince Albert, was initially sitting beside him throughout the awards (and near Michael Jackson), but, when forced to leave her seat to present an award, Carla lost no time in bagging said seat for herself. Claudia claimed it back, only to lose out once again at the subsequent dinner at the Hotel de Paris, when Carla managed to end up beside the Prince, who, according to Piers, ‘looked like the cat who took his pick of two bowls of cream’.

Michael Jackson was also present that evening, with a companion who didn’t attract too much notice at the time, but that was in May 1993. By the August, a criminal investigation had begun into allegations that Jackson had sexually abused a teenage boy called Jordan Chandler. Piers suddenly realised he’d been eyewitness to another big story. Unearthing the photos of the night in question, there was Michael with a young boy on his knee – a relationship that had been widely known about, although until then the implication had been that Michael was actually acting as the child’s surrogate father (and, indeed, the accusations have never been proven, not least because Jackson unwisely decided to pay the family off in possibly the worst decision of his career).

True to form, Piers not only published the inside details of the event in question, in which he referred to the child as ‘Jordan Schwartz’ (Schwartz was, in fact, the name of his stepfather), but again placed himself at the centre of it all. ‘I watched stars’ horror as Jacko cuddled the boy,’ he proclaimed, with an accompanying photograph of Michael Jackson with Jordan on his knee. Of course, this was to be an even bigger story as it marked the start of the slow decline of one of the world’s most famous entertainers.

Piers’ natural instinct for a story was otherwise serving him well. ‘Jordan giggled as the superstar singer hugged and cuddled him in front of a huge VIP audience and millions of TV viewers,’ he solemnly proclaimed. ‘Their extraordinary antics were the talk of the celebrity-packed room at Monte Carlo’s famous Sporting Club.’ There followed dark remarks from various unnamed celebrities – ‘It was disgusting. I wouldn’t let him anywhere near a son of mine’ – while Piers himself commented on how uncomfortable it looked and how he wouldn’t have been at all happy had Jordan been his own child.

No one quite knew how big this particular story was to grow, but Piers was now proving that his news sense was sharper than it had ever been. Nor was it just Kelvin MacKenzie who was delighted that his young hiring had turned out to be such a success; the ultimate owner of the Sun, Rupert Murdoch, was also beginning to notice his antics. Here was a reporter with not just promise and flair but also an ability to be in the right place at the right time. He was beginning to stand head and shoulders above the rest.

But it wasn’t all solemn allegations. The next partner in the celebrity dance that Piers was creating around himself was Chris Evans. At that stage, Evans was building up his own career the first time round, making a name for himself on Channel 4’s The Big Breakfast. He had refused an interview unless Piers beat him at tennis; Piers duly obliged and soon Chris was confiding in him. I’VE COURT YOU, EVANS, blasted the headline, followed by, ‘Chris has to spill the beans after I smash him at tennis.’ Evans himself was very similar to Piers: both were brash young men, eager to make names for themselves in the media, and, like Piers, Evans was to blow the opportunity only to get a second chance.

‘There were various embarrassing questions I wanted to ask Big Breakfast star Chris during our interview – questions he said he had no intention of answering unless I beat him at tennis,’ began Piers. ‘So the scene was set.’ The duo adjourned to the Harbour Club in West London and, minutes later, Chris was telling Piers, ‘Bob’s great. I’ve only seen him about four or five times, but he’s a good laugh.’ The ‘Bob’ in question was Bob Geldof, whose company – Planet 24 – owned The Big Breakfast.

There were, however, a good many examples in the course of the chat that showed both the volatility of Evans’ nature – something that would seriously derail his career and from which he has only recently recovered – and Piers’ own ability to extract highly revealing anecdotes from his subjects. Back then, Chris Evans was still something of an unknown quantity but stories were beginning to circulate, including one to the effect that he had been sacked from Radio Piccadilly in Manchester for making jokes about eating a cat. ‘He [the controller] said it was offensive to cat-owners and that I was a little shit, who would be fired if I said anything like that again,’ revealed Chris. ‘So I walked out on the spot instead.’ It was far from being the last time that Evans walked out on a job, a habit that was in danger of damaging his career.

He was also forthcoming about his days as a kissogram. ‘It was purely business,’ he said. ‘Other kissogram agencies at that time were charging £18 a time and there wasn’t one in my hometown of Warrington so I started up at £6 a time and we promptly built up a massive clientele.’

If that were not enough, both Piers and Chris proved themselves to have the common touch: a knack for the kind of story that would not only amuse but also make the reader think they were talking to one of their own. Asked what his most embarrassing act as a star had been, Evans replied, ‘It was a charity thing I did for Roy Castle last year. There were 26,000 people there, and they wanted me to dress up as a schoolboy and aim a catapult at this stunning model’s bottom. I remember saying to the organisers, “I’ll do it because it’s for charity, but I hope you realise I wouldn’t if you were paying me any amount of money…”’ Game, set and match to both of them.

Piers was by then becoming such a celebrity in his own right that he was accorded the ultimate accolade of being the victim of the ‘gunge tank’ on BBC1’s Noel’s House Party, when viewers had to choose between him and the Daily Mirror’s Rick Sky (his predecessor on ‘Bizarre’) – they eventually plumped for Piers. ‘The nation’s lost its taste,’ he sighed, while being ‘gunged’.

This was later picked up by the Independent, who referred to his ‘hideously self-reverential’ column in the Sun. So it might have been, but the technique was also bringing the writer his own level of fame. By this point, the satirical magazine Private Eye had certainly noticed him, currently dubbing him Piers ‘Gormless’ Morgan, a nickname that might have been amusing but, it must be said, was far from true.

Events were showing Piers to be a really talented journalist, one who within the space of a few short years had gone from being a complete beginner to a person more than capable of holding his own among the celebrities he interviewed. He might not yet have become a household name (indeed, this was some years away), but Sun readers knew him, as did the celebrities with whom he mingled and so, most importantly, did Rupert Murdoch, one of the world’s most powerful media barons.

Piers’ timing, as ever, could not have been better for what was to happen next. He had learned his trade at the hands of a master, Kelvin MacKenzie. Now he was as adept as any at practising some of the darker arts associated with his profession, and he was capable of not only nosing out a story but also of creating one himself pretty much out of thin air, often with himself in the centre of it. He was a seriously talented journalist and great things were expected of him.

At the same time, over at the News Of The World – a Sunday tabloid with the country’s biggest circulation, also owned by one R. Murdoch – crises had been rumbling on the backburner. In December 1993, the paper’s editor Patsy Chapman (in situ since 1988) signed off ill. The paper’s deputy – Stuart Higgins – had been standing in for her, but now a merry-go-round of job shifts was about to take place. And so, in January 1994, Kelvin MacKenzie stepped down from his colossally successful tenure at the Sun and became managing editor of BSkyB television, which was also Murdoch-owned but would not suit him anywhere near as well as the Sun. Higgins stepped across to become editor of the Sun, while, at the News Of The World, it was now obvious that Chapman would not be coming back.

This left a vacancy and so, to the sound of jaws dropping all over Fleet Street, Murdoch promoted twenty-eight-year-old Piers Morgan to the editor’s chair, making him the youngest editor of a national newspaper in over fifty years. Technically, he was ‘acting editor’ (the situation with Patsy Chapman was treated with some sensitivity), but in reality he had managed to nab the top job.

Piers himself was away at the time and was as staggered – and delighted – as anyone else. Usually, it took decades on Fleet Street to reach the very top and yet there he was, after a mere five years, editing the country’s biggest name.

‘I don’t think anything will beat walking on Miami Beach in 1994, age twenty-eight, barefoot in the surf, and getting a call from Rupert Murdoch as he politely informed me I was going to be running the biggest newspaper in the world,’ he admitted afterwards, and, for all the subsequent glories, you would be hard put not to suspect this is a view he holds to this day. At the time, however, he kept things dignified. ‘I am delighted to be given this tremendous opportunity,’ he said. ‘The News Of The World is a national institution and I am eagerly looking forward to the exciting challenge of acting as its editor.’

But this was not the first time that he had been offered a new job. In 1993, Kelvin MacKenzie had offered him the post of assistant editorship of the Sun, but Piers had turned it down. ‘I just didn’t want to do it then,’ he said later. ‘I wasn’t ready and I thought I contributed more by staying on “Bizarre”.’ But this was different; ‘Bizarre’ itself was also turning into a sort of kingmaker for editors: founder John Blake had gone on to become editor of the People, while another ‘Bizarre editor’ (Martin Dunn) ended up in the top chair of Today and, subsequently, the New York Daily News.

As Piers would later put it, in some ways, ‘Bizarre’ was a newspaper-within-a-newspaper and so good training for the next step. ‘Obviously, Kelvin had helped, but you have to realise I was filling the column five days a week, running it like a mini-newspaper,’ he recalled. ‘I had a staff of four and my own budget. I had been offered promotion as features editor of the Sun, but turned it down, feeling I wasn’t ready yet to be a faceless executive.’

A telling remark, for Piers was never ready to be a faceless anything.

The appointment might have caused widespread astonishment, but those who really knew Piers were convinced he was up to the job. ‘Piers is arrogant and ambitious,’ said Rick Sky, his predecessor on ‘Bizarre’ and now a rival columnist at the Daily Mirror. ‘But in our world, that’s no criticism. He’s a good operator and he shouldn’t be underestimated. He will surprise everyone.’

Piers himself was (uncharacteristically) modest but he knew just the opportunity that now lay ahead. ‘I’ll just do my best,’ he declared, as the news became public. ‘You don’t have to be an expert. When I went to “Bizarre”, I said I knew nothing about pop music. All these years on, I still don’t know anything about pop music but I know how to make the column work for readers.’

And he would go on to prove that he knew exactly how to make the News Of The World work for its readers, too.

Piers was called upon to hit the ground running, and so he did; he might have felt nervous behind the scenes but he wasn’t about to show it. ‘When you’re the editor of a paper, you’ve got to exude absolute confidence from the moment you get in to the moment you go to bed because, if you don’t, the staff are going to be, “Oh God, he doesn’t know what he’s doing!” I had to pretend I knew what I was doing, even if I didn’t,’ he revealed later on.

In the meantime, he had to get his team together – and fast. Journalist Sue Carroll had been deputy editor of the News Of The World and had also been stepping into Patsy Chapman’s shoes, as and when necessary. Now she was offered an executive post but turned it down and left the paper. Rather ironically, several years later and after a stint at the Sun, she was to end up as the Mirror’s star columnist, but Piers himself had made an effort to get her to stay, something that smoothed the way for their relationship further down the line.

Instead, Phil Hall was taken on as Piers’ deputy. With a background on the People and the Sunday Express, he was felt to have a strong news background. Meanwhile, the cavalcade thundered on: in June, it was announced that Patsy was not coming back, and Piers was promoted from acting editor to the real thing, although, in fact, everyone had known, right from the start, that he was the de facto guy in charge.

Circulation, the lifeblood of any newspaper, began to rise and, with it, Piers Morgan’s star. His tenure at the News Of The World was to prove a controversial one but, as so often in his career, he managed to be right in the middle of the action – just as it was all going on.