Piers Morgan: The Insider

[Honeybee]

Famous in the UK as the man sacked for running faked pictures of UK troops torturing Iraqi civillian (only for it to turn out that they did), Morgan has been editor of two best-selling tabloid papers (before he was 30).

This is a bit of a page-turner. It's written in the form of a diary so is very easy to read. Morgan comes across as incredibly smug and self-serving and with a skin slightly thicker than that of a rhinocerous. But I suspect those are all necessary qualities in a successful tabloid editor. There's lots of 'I felt sorry for her, but it was such a great story we just had to run it' type justification, when I don't really think feeling sorry ever came into it. If it did, he wouldn't have been there. There's also an awful lot of name-dropping – tea with the Blairs; lunch with the Browns; dinner with Marco (Pierre White); drinks with Richard (Branson); getting Paul and Heather together; and so on. Which is rich as he criticises others for doing exactly the same thing. Tellingly, the birth of his sons gets one line, a lunch with Tony and Cherie gets several pages.

There seemed to be an awful lot going on in the world of tabloid reporting – Diana's death; Paula Yates's suicide; September 11th; the war in Iraq; etc. And it's interesting to be reminded of these things and think about where you were at the time.

It's a good read, and a must-read for anyone interested in tabloid journalism. Surprisingly though, it's exceptionally badly edited. He should have got his old Mirror production team to have a read though . . .

 

[Shade]

Thanks for reviewing this Honeybee - I've been kind of interested in it, but more in a car-crash way than to actually read. I remember when it came out, Private Eye (never fans of Morgan's) pointed out that although the book is written in diary form, it was all composed recently, so he gets lots of stuff hilariously wrong (which I guess you were getting at with your comment about the editing). Here's what they said...

The Insider looks like a contemporaneous diary, and in his introduction Moron [sic] cites Alan Clark's diaries as his inspiration. In fact the book has a closer kinship to the Hitler Diaries - a forgery compiled years after the event for the sole purpose of making a fast buck. Moron dashed the book off in such haste, however, that he has left behind a trail of clues...

Saturday 12 March 1994: Piers is worried that a [News of the World] kiss'n'tell story might be a con. "Step forward Tom Crone, our legal manager, who is now married to Pierce Brosnan's ex-girlfriend. Anyone who can nick James Bond's bird has got to be a cool customer." And gifted with remarkable prescience: the current James Bond at the time is actually Timothy Dalton. Pierce Brosnan is not chosen to succeed him until later in the year, and makes his first 007 film in 1995.

Thursday 25 January 1996: "Went to interview Tony Blair, after his toughest week as leader. Harriet Harman, secretary of state for social security, had revealed that she's sending her son to a selective grammar school." Quite how Harman has achieved the job of secretary of state while remaining on the opposition front bench is not explained.

Wednesday 26 March 1997: "Tea with Tony Blair at No 10 ... He was yawning a lot and drinking endless cups of tea. I tried to wake him up a bit." Blair may have been yawning, but is it possible that Piers himself was fast asleep and dreamed the whole thing? If not, he has missed a sensational story for his front page: Tony Blair has moved into 10 Downing Street already, even though John Major is still Prime Minister and there is more than a month to go before the general election!

Thursday 14 May 1998: Downing Street has given the Sun a ghost-written article under Bill Clinton's name which the Mirror had been promised exclusively. Piers is furious with Alastair Campbell and Tony Blair. "They've been in power less than a month and already stiffed us to help the Sun." Less than a month since May 1997, eh? How time flies!

Sunday 24 January 1999: "High excitement today when Kofi Annan, UN secretary general, met my man in New York, Andy Lines, at a reception. 'Aaahhh... the Daily Mirror, yes. Your editor is Piers Morgan, isn't he?'" A charming story, but pure fantasy. On 24 January 1999 Kofi Annan was in the middle of a week-long trip to Switzerland.

Tuesday 3 August 1999: "Went to Chequers for the first time today for tea with Blair. An extraordinary place, stuck out in the middle of the countryside... 'Do you fancy a look round the old cabinet war rooms?' he asked. And we strolled up to where Churchill made all those 'fight them on the beaches' speeches." Once again, some form of Tardis-transportation is clearly involved, since the cabinet war rooms are actually in London SW1 - as is the House of Commons, which is where Churchill made his "fight them on the beaches" speech on 4 June 1940.