My wife said, “As someone who has to wake up to Piers every day, my heart goes out to viewers of Good Morning Britain today"
MONDAY, NOVEMBER 23
Day One of my new, permanent (well, TV-land-permanent, so probably about six months) stint co-hosting Good Morning Britain.
I set two alarms and gave my driver firm instructions that if I wasn’t outside by 4am, he was to hammer on the door.
I woke with a tremendous jolt, hearing what I thought was a hammering on my door, and instinctively bolted downstairs – naked, shocked and disorientated.
My own equally long-suffering wife Celia appeared to say this: ‘As someone who has to wake up to Piers every day, my heart goes out to viewers of Good Morning Britain today. But most of all it goes out to Susanna (Reid)’
There was nobody there.
It was 12.50am.
For the next hour I lay staring at the ceiling like a jet-lagged Bill Murray in Lost In Translation – without the comfort of Scarlett Johansson soothing my brow.
The show itself was just as unpredictable but far more enjoyable.
I locked horns with Labour’s Shadow Defence Secretary Maria Eagle, who doesn’t agree with anything her boss Jeremy Corbyn thinks about nuclear weapons, shoot-to-kill, bombing Syria – nor even, I suspect, the weather. But then, who does?
Corbyn, as I warned, is already a complete joke; that weird, bearded guy sitting in the corner of the pub in his cardigan muttering to himself, who we all avoid on pain of societal death.
Later in the show I clashed with deluded X Factor loser Mason Noise, who refused to even tell me his real name (hardly surprising given it’s the dismally uncool ‘Binnell’) before comparing himself to Batman and Justin Timberlake and revealing he intends to save the planet.
I’d say he has a better chance of achieving that than becoming the next Batman or Justin Timberlake.
A number of showbiz ‘friends’ paid tribute to my new job, led by Ant and Dec from Australia.
‘I’m sorry we can’t watch your first show Piers,’ cackled Ant, ‘but we’re in the jungle... actually, to be honest, we wouldn’t be watching it anyway.’
Dec then put on his best insincere, sincere face to wish me luck and opine: ‘Don’t get sacked like you normally do!’ Ho ho.
Lord Sugar, naturally, did his best to trash my performance, even mocking my supposedly false teeth (they’re actually real, unlike his surgically de-bagged eyes).
Fortunately, his delightful wife Lady Ann tweeted me behind his back to say: ‘You were very good this morning Piers.’
This sent the old growler into apoplexy. ‘What’s the matter with the woman?’ he raged indignantly.
Send your Twitter questions to @piersmorgan using the hashtag #askpiers – and every week I’ll answer the most amusing
Well, other than her inexplicable decision to marry you Alan, nothing.
My own equally long-suffering wife Celia appeared to say this: ‘As someone who has to wake up to Piers every day, my heart goes out to viewers of Good Morning Britain today. But most of all it goes out to Susanna.’
‘Celia feels my pain,’ sighed my co-host. ‘From your real wife to your new TV wife.’
‘Do I get any TV conjugal rights?’ I asked.
‘NOPE!’ she yelped, faux horror etched on her face.
On a positive note, I was trending all morning on Twitter.
On a slightly less positive note, I spent most of it tucked on the Top Ten list between Ed Miliband and The Big Issue, an ominous portent if ever there was one.
The reviews flew in like vultures around an antelope’s freshly deceased carcass.
My favourite was in The Guardian, which concluded: ‘If breakfast television in 2015 is a lovely hot mug of tea, then Piers Morgan is a bucket of cold sick.’
It turned out this was a coded compliment, as the writer added: ‘It pains me to admit this, but he might be just what we need.’
Not according to one viewer, Babs Parker, who declared: ‘Won’t be watching GMB any more as Piers Morgan is too loud, too opinionated and too ugly. Wrong decision ITV, the sofa needs Ben Shephard.’
Now Ben’s a more handsome fellow, granted, and he’s still on the GMB sofa every Thursday and Friday.
But as I said on air: ‘I don’t think I’m ugly, and my mother will tell you I’m a thing of beauty.’
I was right.
My mother later confessed she had tweeted: ‘Piers Morgan is gorgeous.’
Beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder, even if that beholder gave birth to you!
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 24
Sir Ian Botham is 60 today.
I was recently invited to a small golf-and-lunch party as part of his celebrations. (Like the other greatest Briton of my lifetime, the Queen, he has a number of these events through the year!)
We battled our way around the famous Sunningdale Old Course, Beefy as ferociously competitive as you’d imagine and unable to hide his incandescence that I beat him (my partner, it must be said, played very well...).
Sir Ian Botham is a fiercely patriotic, swashbuckling, complex, massive-hearted, never-give-in warrior of a man whose true legacy of greatness lies in his performances off the pitch as much as on it
Then we drank very fine wine and guzzled dazzlingly good food at the Waterside Inn, Alain Roux’s three-Michelin-starred restaurant in Bray.
As the sun set, I joined Beefy, his old England colleague Bob Willis and two more of his oldest friends in a small hexagonal hut by the water outside.
We smoked big cigars, drank brandy and talked cricket for several magical hours.
‘I wish Winston Churchill was here,’ Beefy declared at one point.
No need.
His spirit lives on in Sir Ian; a fiercely patriotic, swashbuckling, complex, massive-hearted, never-give-in warrior of a man whose true legacy of greatness lies in his performances off the pitch as much as on it.
He’s raised more than £20 million for leukaemia during 16 charity walks, yomping around the world often at huge personal discomfort. In that time, survival rates for leukaemia have soared, and that’s thanks in large part to fundraisers such as Sir Ian.
When I asked him what he was most proud of in his life, he said it was that statistic.
Rightly so.
Happy birthday, Beefy.
