Search
04 Nov 2025
Search
04 Nov 2025
Please allow ads as they help fund our trusted local news content.
Kindly add us to your ad blocker whitelist.
If you want further access to Ireland's best local journalism, consider contributing and/or subscribing to our free daily Newsletter .
Support our mission and join our community now.
To continue reading this article, you can subscribe for as little as €0.50 per week which will also give you access to all of our premium content and archived articles!
Alternatively, you can pay €0.50 per article, capped at €1 per day.
Thank you for supporting Ireland's best local journalism!
Love him or hate him, it’s hard to ignore TV presenter, journalist and author Piers Morgan.
Whether he’s having a rant about Harry and Meghan, cosying up to Donald Trump, haranguing politicians or hobnobbing with celebrity pals including Dame Joan Collins and Gary Lineker, there’s never a dull moment for the ex-newspaper editor-turned-TV titan.
The outspoken presenter has gone his own way since leaving Talk TV (now known as Talk) last year, acquiring his own YouTube channel for his show Piers Morgan Uncensored, which has 4.2 million subscribers.
He reckons he has probably mellowed a bit since his early days of broadcasting.
“I turned 60 in March, I probably have calmed down a bit. You mellow also with experience and wisdom, and also with the fact that I now own my own business, I’m my own boss, I’m not answerable to anybody else. I think that brings with it a certain calmness.”
Mellow, however, is not a word that springs to mind when reading his latest book Woke Is Dead – a sequel to Wake Up, which urged us all to kill off the scourge of wokeism.
In the new book he again rants about all the issues which wind him up, most notably transgender matters, cancel culture, free speech censorship, the demise of what he considers real men, ‘virtue-signalling’ vegans, climate activists and, of course, Harry and Meghan.
“Woke isn’t actually dead yet but I hope that my book will be the final nail in its miserable, joyless coffin. Wokeism as an ideology is just designed to suck all the joy out of life, from people who want to be hectoring and censorious and puritanical and cancel everyone for absolutely everything.
“I think that most people aren’t like that and they want to have a fun, fulfilling life.
“It doesn’t mean a licence to be cruel or hateful or bigoted but it does mean you want to be able to lead your life without treading on eggshells all the time.”
The book, which is a pretty exhausting read, highlights cancel culture crusaders that annoy him, the wokeism he considers ludicrous and damaging – and how the tide is turning.
He reckons that Donald Trump was re-elected because he “represented to American voters the core of common sense” and denies that being a friend of the president for many years – they met when Morgan won the US version of The Celebrity Apprentice in 2008 – has clouded his judgment.
“There’s a more nuanced place you can be with Trump, that actually a lot of things he stands for are good things, whether that’s waging fewer foreign wars or having stronger borders, or being tougher on serious crime or paying less tax. I think all those things are things that most British people agree with.”
How close are they?
“We text each other every couple of weeks. He calls me every few weeks. He’s probably called me four or five times this year since he’s become president again. He’s a busy guy. But we always have good conversations and I appreciate the friendship.”
Morgan is notoriously thick-skinned. Every time his career has taken a knock, he bounces back. He’s been sacked twice – once as editor of the Daily Mirror in 2004 for refusing to apologise for publishing photos of British soldiers abusing Iraqi detainees that were widely believed to have been faked; again by CNN in 2014 for poor ratings on a primetime show.
In 2021 he famously stormed off set of Good Morning Britain following a row about his coverage of the Duchess of Sussex’s Oprah Winfrey interview. He left the show after refusing to apologise for calling her a liar. Now, it all seems like water off a duck’s back.
The former Britain’s Got Talent judge grew up in a country pub in East Sussex after the death of his father, an Irish dentist, when he was 11 months old. His mother Gabrielle went on to marry Glynne Pughe-Morgan, who he always refers to as ‘Dad’.
“We’re a big family with a lot of mentally strong characters, lots of forceful personalities, lots of opinions flying around, but we also have each other’s back.
“I was surrounded by mentally strong people who taught me the importance of being resilient and bouncing back from adversity and being tough about stuff and not wallowing in victimhood or self pity, because those are energy-sapping things which get you nowhere.”
He remains impervious to the toxic trolls, but listens when his mother and close family and friends pull him up when they think he’s stepped out of line.
“I’ve got great friends and family and what they think about me matters a lot more than some Twitter troll.”
He has three sons from a previous marriage and a 13-year-old daughter with his wife, journalist Celia Walden, to whom he’s been married for 15 years. They have homes in London and East Sussex, and another in Beverly Hills.
Is he argumentative at home?
“Not really. I’m a much calmer individual at home. I think home should be an oasis from the jungle and the fray of media life because the media is always relentless.
“I enjoy it and it’s fun but I think when the door shuts I like to just put the telly on, watch a bit of Arsenal or a good movie or TV series and just chill, have a nice glass of wine and recharge.”
Does he ever apologise?
Among his most memorable spats was with TV presenter Jeremy Clarkson in 2004, he recalls.
“He ended up punching me before we settled things at the British Press Awards. I’ve still got the scar on my forehead and it wasn’t entirely unjustified so I have no complaints about it, although I did think he had a very weak punch and he did break his finger hitting my head, which is quite satisfying.
“But he contacted me out of the blue and said, ‘Morgan, Clarkson here, drink?’ We met in my local pub and actually had a great night. He drank a lot of rosé, I drank a lot of beer. We got his daughter and one of my sons to act as the official peace treaty ratifiers and peace in our time was agreed.
Woke Is Dead by Piers Morgan is published in hardback by HarperCollins, priced £22. Available now
Subscribe or register today to discover more from DonegalLive.ie
Buy the e-paper of the Donegal Democrat, Donegal People's Press, Donegal Post and Inish Times here for instant access to Donegal's premier news titles.
Keep up with the latest news from Donegal with our daily newsletter featuring the most important stories of the day delivered to your inbox every evening at 5pm.
This publication supports the work of the Press Council of Ireland and Office of the Press Ombudsman, and our staff operate within the Code of Practice of the Press Council. You can obtain a copy of the Code, or contact the Council, at www.presscouncil.ie, Lo-call 1800 208 080 or email: info@presscouncil.ie.
