Piers Morgan has slammed American broadcaster Gayle King for acting as a ‘PR mouthpiece’ for the Duke and Duchess of Sussex to ‘facilitate their ongoing public trashing of our Royal Family’.
The former Good Morning Britain host told the CBS This Morning presenter last night to do her ‘job as a journalist and ask them about all the lies they told’ in their interview with Oprah Winfrey after it aired on March 7.
Morgan, 55, who quit GMB last Tuesday after claiming he didn’t ‘believe a word’ Meghan Markle said during the conversation with the US chat show queen, added in a tweet last night: ‘America should hear THE truth.’
It comes after Miss King, 66, backed ITV’s stance over Morgan’s departure from GMB after he refused to apologise for his comments about Meghan, which led to the highest number of complaints in TV regulator Ofcom’s history.
She told her SiriusXM radio programme last Thursday: ‘Piers Morgan is no longer with a job. He stormed off the air after saying that I don’t believe that she had mental illness, I don’t believe she was suicidal.
‘They got over 41,000 calls of people weighing in to say that is not OK, that is not cool. And by the next day, he was out of a job. He said he resigned. I find that a little hard to believe when you had 41,000 calls.’
Former GMB host Piers Morgan (left, in West London last week) has slammed CBS This Morning broadcaster Gayle King (right)
Morgan criticised Miss King in a tweet last night, in which he accused her of ‘acting as your Sussex friends’ PR mouthpiece’
Miss King also referred to GMB weather presenter Alex Beresford, who was involved in the moment that saw Morgan walk out last week. She said: ‘And kudos to his co-anchor, they said it was the weather guy.
‘I wonder if he was the weather guy, but they described him as a weather guy, who spoke out and really let Piers have it on the air, and then Piers stormed off, and now Piers is no longer on the air there.’
More than 250,000 people have now signed three separate Change.org petitions demanding that Morgan – who also presented a show on CNN in the US from 2011 to 2014 – should be brought back to GMB.
During the same SiriusXM show last Thursday, Miss King, who is friends with both Meghan and Oprah, claimed the Sussexes had a deal with CBS and ITV to postpone their ‘bombshell’ interview if Prince Philip had died.
The Duke and Duchess of Sussex in conversation with Oprah Winfrey in an interview first aired on CBS on March 7
ITV’s Good Morning Britain has lost nearly a third of its viewers since Piers Morgan left on Tuesday last week
It comes as Miss King sparked a new row between Meghan’s supporters and Buckingham Palace on Tuesday after revealing the Sussexes had told her that Harry had held talks with his brother Prince William and father Charles which ‘were not productive’.
The Duke of Cambridge is now said to be wary of engaging further with the couple for fear of their private conversations becoming ‘plastered on US TV’.
And Miss King’s revelations about the couple’s arrangements for the death of Harry’s grandfather will add further fuel to the fire amid claims the palace is unhappy at the Sussexes revealing a private conversation over the weekend.
The Duke of Edinburgh, 99, was released from King Edward VII’s Hospital in London on Tuesday after a month being treated for an infection and having heart surgery.
During their interview on March 7, the Sussexes accused an unnamed royal – not the Queen or Philip – of raising concerns about how dark their son Archie’s skin tone would be before he was born, and Meghan also claimed she begged for help while suicidal.
And Miss King, 66, who is also close friends with Oprah, revealed on SiriusXM: ‘Well, just so you know, they had done that interview before Prince Phillip went into the hospital.
‘And if something, God forbid, had happened to him, the interview would not have run at this particular time. But the interview was done and was scheduled before he went into the hospital. But a lot of people have raised that point.’
But there appear to be inconsistencies in her story. On the day that Philip was admitted to King Edward VII’s Hospital, Miss King went on air to say that Oprah had been working on her questions ‘all weekend’ and had been told by Meghan that ‘nothing was off limits’, intimating the interview had yet to be filmed.
This was backed by industry sources, who told ITV that the interview would be filmed later that week. It was shown on CBS in the US on March 7 and on ITV in the UK the following evening.
Philip was admitted to King Edward VII’s Hospital on February 16, before moving two weeks later to another hospital in the City of London, St Bartholomew’s, where he had a successful heart operation on March 3.
Two days later he was transferred back to King Edward VII’s to recuperate and continue his treatment, and left on Tuesday before being driven to Windsor Castle where he was reunited with the Queen after a month apart.
The Sussexes had faced calls to postpone the interview while Philip was in hospital out of respect for him.
Miss King, speaking last Thursday on her radio programme Gayle King In The House, during which she was interrupted by a FaceTime call from her best friend Oprah, added: ‘I think that Harry and Meghan both have been through so much for the past three years and they really have tried to work it out privately. They really have tried to get help, and nothing was working.
‘So I think they wanted people to have some understanding about why they made the decision that they made and what they’ve been going through, and I do think that they accomplished that. I do. I think it was very brave of her and Harry to reveal what they did. It’s unheard of, and it certainly has been a ‘bombshell’, is the word.
Prince William, Charles, Harry, Camilla, Kate and Meghan follow the Queen at Westminster Abbey on March 9, 2020
‘There were six or seven that night. I stopped counting at six. It was bombshell, after bombshell, after bombshell, but I do believe it was an honest conversation. I’m hoping it will lead to change.’
It comes as it emerged GMB has lost nearly a third of its viewers since Morgan sensationally quit last week.
The ITV morning show has pulled in less than 900,000 viewers for its past three days – significantly down from the 1.29million who tuned in on Tuesday last week for what turned out to be Morgan’s final programme.
That figure represented the first time the ITV broadcast had beaten its long-time rival BBC Breakfast, which had 1.25million, but GMB has since lost 400,000 viewers in just a week to fall well behind in the morning ratings war.
On Tuesday, GMB brought in 890,000 viewers with an audience share of 23 per cent, compared to the 1.57million tuning into the BBC with a 42 per cent share. The BBC’s peak saw 2.34million watching at 8.15am.
On the same day last year – Monday, March 16, 2020 – GMB had an average audience of 900,000 compared to the BBC’s 1.81million.
The Queen with Harry and Meghan at the Queen’s Young Leaders Awards Ceremony at Buckingham Palace in June 2018
The changing figures over the past week suggest GMB has lost hundreds of thousands of viewers who would either not normally be watching breakfast TV, or who had switched from watching BBC to ITV in the morning.
It is also having a knock-on effect on programmes following after, with 1.1million people tuning in for Lorraine on ITV at 9.15am this Tuesday, compared to 1.39million for Morning Live on BBC One in the same time period.
These figures are significantly down for ITV compared to the same time period on Tuesday last week, when 1.29million tuned in for Lorraine – but there was a roughly equivalent 1.36million watching Morning Live.
GMB had a dramatic programme yesterday which saw actress Patsy Palmer shut down her interview after being billed as an ‘addict to wellness guru’, and Susanna Reid scolded by former MP Edwina Currie who told the presenter she is ‘not Piers Morgan’ during a heated conversation about the Government’s coronavirus response.