Piers Morgan

Lock up your sub-editors! Our reliably vitriolic contributor Fish Stock returns today with an evisceration of a man with no morals, no class and no chin...

Question:

Why is Piers Morgan a wanker?

Answer:

First of all his name is actually Piers Stefan Pughe-Morgan. Surely anyone who has the audacity not to change their name more to something more responsible is a wanker…

It’s hard to know where to start when it comes to this truly risible figure. In my (obviously very worthy) opinion, he represents precisely 50% of what is wrong with British journalism over the past fifteen years. (The other 50% being found somewhere between here and here and definitely here)

Morgan edited the News Of The World for just one year before he undertook his decade long tenure at The Daily Mirror. During his time at both he was responsible for any number of fantastically offensive leaders. His front pages were iconic, but arguably for the wrong reasons: Sensationalist doesn’t begin to describe them.

His orchestration of the papers’ coverage was incessant and invasive; often dragging stories about the likes of Dunblane, Ian Huntley and Sarah Payne out over many months, continually harassing witnesses and the families involved for a sound bite under the guise of reclaiming Britain’s moral compass on behalf of the people.

Well here’s a soundbite for you Piers. Fuck off. If I ever need lessons in morality and ethics from an odious little creature who manages to package all the inhuman qualities you should so guiltily embellish on your CV into a physical form, then I’ll come straight to you. But you could be waiting a long time. If there’s one thing my parents taught me, it’s this: Don’t be a cunt.

Alas his papers sold and continued to do so. Even more so after he, in 2002, decided to do away with the Daily Mirror’s traditional ‘red top’ in favour of the high-brow black banner. It was an attempt to rebrand the Mirror as a serious paper, to take it above and beyond – to the next level. Of that period, he says “It was the great tabloid decade”.... Cunt.

One of my favourite “Morgan Moments” as they shall hereafter be known was his getting punched by the also dubious, albeit substantially less so, Jeremy Clarkson at the British Press Awards ceremony about 4 years ago. Clarkson didn’t stop at one punch, delivering three rather satisfying haymakers allegedly in revenge for The Mirror's coverage of his personal life.

Private Eye, of which HIGNFY captain, Ian Hislop is currently editor, routinely refers to Morgan as “Piers Moron”, sometimes extending him the courtesy of ‘Piers “Morgan” Moron’ and even more recently, “Rent a Gob”, in reference to his ever more frequent appearances on talentless shows like Poptards: The Remedials and America’s Next Top Cunt.

He sheepishly faced MPs' questions about the publication of photographs allegedly showing abuse of prisoners by British soldiers in Iraq. He cynically stood by the decision to send to print despite doubts over the pictures' authenticity, and refused to reveal his sources, even when the photographs proved to be fake citing reporters privilege.

Perhaps the series of stories he is most famed for are his “run-ins” with the royal family (and Paul Burrell), one of which spawned the masterful headline: "Harry's had an accident but we're not allowed to tell you." Which was printed over rumours Prince Harry had got a bit slicey slicey on his arms.

Of his apparently happy and stable childhood Morgan jokes: “I've tried to come up with some clouds, make one of those misery documentaries. I said to my dad, ‘Can't we come up with some beatings, say you stubbed out some cigarettes on me? We could make some money, shift half a million books’.” Hilarious you may think, but I truly doubt such self-serving cynicism is below him.

There was a fantastic albeit depressing comment about him, which I found a year ago on that last great bastion of free-speech, Youtube. It read: “He may be a wanker, but he wanks all the way to the bank". Too true. Fish Stock