Friday, November 27
‘You’ve been invited on to a Christmas special of Celebrity Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?,’ emailed Tracey, my long-suffering PA. ‘Presume you’ll decline, but thought I’d better mention it given your history with Jeremy Clarkson and the fact that they say he’s personally signed off on you appearing!’
The sensible part of my brain instantly screamed: ‘Not in a gazillion years.’
After all, I still have a scar on my right temple, nestling right outside the sensible part of my cerebral cortex, from where Clarkson punched me at the height of our now healed ten-year feud. And he’s always refused my many interview requests.
It came down to my intimate knowledge of stairlifts (I’m too young), insects (I’m not David Attenborough) and ski resorts (I’ve never skied) on Celebrity Who Wants To Be A Millionaire?
In fact, GQ editor Dylan Jones reveals in the current issue, while explaining why I’ve been named the magazine’s TV Personality Of The Year, that when he once asked Clarkson to submit to my interrogation, the ex-Top Gear host howled: ‘You must be f**king joking!’
But there’s another devilish, risk-taking, often self-harming part of my brain – the one that once made me get in a cricket net in front of a baying mob and face 95mph rib-breaking balls from Australian fast bowler Brett Lee – and it was screaming: ‘Oh come on, you big wuss, this could be hilarious.’
As so often in my life, the devilish side prevailed.
So today I found myself sitting in the green room of the WWTBAM studios in Salford, along with fellow guests Jordan Banjo from Diversity, comedian Ronni Ancona and former world champion sprinter Iwan Thomas, wondering what the hell I was doing there, as mounting panic stirred in my bowels.
I spent last night desperately trying to prep for it, but it was pointless. How do you prepare for a quiz when you have no idea even what subjects may come up? You’re either going to know the answers, or you’re not.
And if you don’t, then you’re reliant on luck and the lifelines.
Covid restrictions meant there was no studio audience, and therefore no Ask the Audience option. Instead, I could have two Phone- a-Friends (I went for Susanna Reid and ‘Judge’ Rob Rinder), the usual 50/50 and a choice of Ask the Host, which would obviously be the very last thing I’d want to do given that Clarkson would rather garotte himself than assist me.
He slouched into the green room with a massive smirk on his face. ‘Morgan, I can’t believe you agreed to do this!’
‘Nor can I,’ I grimaced.
‘Well don’t worry,’ he grinned with the undisguised glee of a sadistic public executioner who gets a kick out of guillotining people, ‘now you’ve been dumb enough to say yes, I fully intend giving the British public exactly what it wants…’
Clarkson then cackled like Jack Nicholson in The Shining, which suggested he imagined – probably correctly – that the British public would want nothing less than me suffering a catastrophic, career-ending humiliation.
‘My only advice to all of you,’ he said, ‘is don’t rely on me under any circumstances unless it’s about cars, geography or military history. And in your case, Morgan, you can’t even rely on me for those…’
To give you some idea how hopeless Clarkson is at Ask the Host, even when he’s trying to help a contestant, he was recently asked when the last Concorde flight took place and got it wrong by five years – despite being on it himself, and sitting in front of me!
(We made ‘BREAKING NEWS’ on Sky when he threw water over my lap after sneering: ‘I seem to have a **** behind me.’)
I was the first contestant, and as I stood by the side of the stage, I heard him announce me with the immortal words: ‘Please welcome our first guest… who is a truly awful human being!’
Suffice it to say, our subsequent ‘banter’ lived up, or down, to every expectation of what might happen when two ego-crazed, rutting human stags, with a relationship laced in physical violence, finally clash on national television.
(At one point Clarkson even showed off the finger he broke and permanently disfigured when hitting my head and quoted Chinese warrior Sun Tzu: ‘If you wait by the river long enough, the bodies of your enemies will float by.’)
It was also a genuinely nerve-racking experience, not least because I was representing a very special charity, the brilliant Scotty’s Little Soldiers, which takes care of kids whose mother or father die serving their country.
I don’t mind being cavalier with my own money, but it’s quite a different responsibility when it’s for such an important cause.
I won’t ruin the fun by revealing what happened, as you can see for yourselves when it airs, appropriately, on Boxing Day at 9.30pm on ITV.
All I will say is that it came down to my intimate knowledge of stairlifts (I’m too young), insects (I’m not David Attenborough), ski resorts (I’ve never skied), Formula 1 (I don’t watch) – and a very reluctant reliance on both Clarkson and Susanna to try to save my sorry little a**e from early elimination.
Sunday, November 29
Boxing legend Mike Tyson came out of retirement today after 15 years to fight Roy Jones Jr in an exhibition bout that went way better than cynics feared given that Tyson is now 54, only a year younger than me, and Jones is 51.
Both men got into great shape, especially Iron Mike, and put up a credible show for eight rounds.
But it was something Tyson said beforehand that resonated most strongly with me.
Boxing legend Mike Tyson came out of retirement today after 15 years to fight Roy Jones Jr (both above) in an exhibition bout that went way better than cynics feared
Asked why on earth he wanted to put himself into such a potentially dangerous situation again, he replied simply: ‘Whatever I’m afraid to do, I do it.’
That’s why he got back in the ring. It’s why I got in the net with Brett Lee and, ironically, it’s also why I agreed to do Millionaire with someone who’d punched me in the head.
As Helen Keller, who overcame being blind and deaf to become a world-renowned author and political activist, said in her book The Open Door: ‘Life is either a daring adventure or nothing at all.’