PIERS MORGAN: Would you live with me for a year if it cured Covid? Now there’s a challenge… 

Friday, January 29

A new Ipsos MORI poll has revealed the British public think that Marcus Rashford (56 per cent) and I (32 per cent) have done a better job of holding the Government to account during this pandemic than the actual leader of the opposition, Sir Keir Starmer (29 per cent), any other MPs or journalists/broadcasters, and the Labour Party, which came bottom of the poll with just 23 per cent.

I think this is because they seem reluctant to actually oppose, believing it’s somehow unpatriotic to vote against any decisions the Government takes to handle the crisis. Instead, they vote with the Government on almost everything, then say ‘we wouldn’t have done that’ later when it doesn’t work.

Given we have the worst death toll in Europe, and the Government has got most of its decisions wrong – with the stunningly successful exception of the vaccine programme – this is a flawed strategy and explains why the Conservatives still hold a polling lead over Labour despite having such a disastrous year.

A new Ipsos MORI poll has revealed the British public think that Marcus Rashford (56 per cent) and I (32 per cent) have done a better job of holding the Government to account

Take the gloves off, Sir Keir, it shouldn’t be left to a footballer and a TV presenter to do your job for you.

 

Thursday, February 4

Even some of my oldest enemies have been saying nice things about me.

Private Eye editor Ian Hislop, with whom I’ve had a lengthy feud although I love his magazine when I’m not in it and enjoy his rapier wit on Have I Got News For You when it’s not aimed at me, told Press Gazette: ‘The truth is that his breakfast show and his harangues of Hancock or Priti Patel the other day, they’re pretty good. I like to take things as they are and if events change then I change my mind and I think he does a pretty good job.’

Then Hislop froze in horror as he realised that I might read his shock endorsement and added desperately, and fruitlessly: ‘Don’t put that bit in…’

Not everyone is as effusive about my Minister interrogations. Sunday Times columnist Matthew Syed raged against my ‘idiotic rants’, branded me a ‘parasite’ – the word the Nazis infamously used for Jewish people – and a ‘temporary hero for deluded souls’ who is ‘demeaning public debate’.

Syed is a former table-tennis player who built a name for himself as a motivational expert in how to win at life despite failing to progress past the first round at two Olympics and admitting he choked so badly ‘I could barely hit the ball’.

I was curious as to what prompted his extraordinarily vicious attack.

Then I discovered that Syed is best friends with Jeremy Hunt, the man who as Health Secretary for six years from 2012-18 failed so dismally to prepare us for this pandemic.

In fact, when Hunt ran for Conservative leader in 2018, Syed appeared in an unctuous grovelling campaign video for him in which he said: ‘The most striking quality about Jeremy Hunt was his unwavering commitment to get results.’ 

Shame those ‘results’ didn’t include ensuring the UK had adequate PPE stocks, effective testing systems or genuine ‘protective rings’ around care homes to make them more secure against deadly viruses.

No wonder Matthew Syed doesn’t want me to continue asking senior Tories tough questions.

 

Wednesday, February 10

How big a personal sacrifice would you make to get rid of this wretched bloody coronavirus?

Comedians James Acaster and Josh Widdicombe, hosts of the TV show Hypothetical, were asked: ‘Hypothetically, would you spend a year living with Piers Morgan if it helped bring an end to Covid?’

Acaster – who made headlines recently when he told Lorraine Kelly to ‘go f*ck yourself’ on The Last Leg after she named me as one of her pandemic heroes (‘You don’t watch Superman,’ Acaster explained, ‘and all the way through Lex Luthor’s killing everyone, then at one point he’s nice to an old lady and everyone goes, “Well done Lex, screw you Superman.” ’) – was surprisingly unequivocal: ‘Yes.’

Josh Widdicombe (above left, with James Acaster) said: ‘The vaccines are coming out now, so… Also, the side effects of living with Piers Morgan are untested at this stage.’

Josh Widdicombe (above left, with James Acaster) said: ‘The vaccines are coming out now, so… Also, the side effects of living with Piers Morgan are untested at this stage.’

Widdicombe less so: ‘The vaccines are coming out now, so… Also, the side effects of living with Piers Morgan are untested at this stage. Once they’ve tested it on enough people, come back to me.’

 

Thursday, February 11

These infernal yet undeniably effective lockdowns have sparked renewed debate about what is the greatest TV series ever made, because we’ve all got little option for entertainment but to slouch on the sofa like sloths watching them all over again. 

There are many good candidates, from The Sopranos and The Wire to Mad Men, Breaking Bad and Entourage.

But for me, there’s no debate.

I’ve been tucking back into The West Wing, all 156 episodes of it, and nothing comes close to it for quality of acting (led by the brilliant Martin Sheen, Richard Schiff and Allison Janney), richness of writing (Aaron Sorkin at the peak of his powers) or power of storylines.

It’s a masterclass in US politics, and how a White House should be run.

But also, a valuable reminder of the vitality of vigorous democratic debate.

The West Wing’s razor-sharp dialogue centres around numerous very smart, very funny people having endless humungous arguments but invariably learning from each other too and reaching better collective decisions.

This is no accident.

Sorkin once told me how he found his voice as a writer: ‘I was the dumbest kid in my family,’ he said. ‘So, I’d sit at the dinner table just listening to fantastic arguments like I was watching a tennis match. And I grew to really love the sound of a point really well made, of somebody saying, but you haven’t thought of it this way, but think about that, but what if this were to happen? And as a writer, I grew up just wanting to imitate that sound.’

Hyper-partisan social-media tribalism is killing this kind of open-minded critical thinking, and we need to get back to it fast or democracy will die.

As for actors, Sorkin said: ‘There are some things that an actor can’t fake. An actor can’t fake smart. An actor can’t fake funny. So, if you need those things, you need to find somebody who’s smart and funny.’

Sorkin found a dozen of them for The West Wing. That’s why it’s the Greatest Of All Time.