By Gavin Mackintosh-
Good Morning Britain staff threatened to boycott the show if former host Piers Morgan had been allowed to return as a guest.
The outspoken journalist was keen for a comeback to promote his new series – Piers Morgan Uncensored – which launched on Rupert Murdoch’s new TalkTV channel tonight (Monday). However GMB staff, in demonstration of their loyalty to weather presenter Alex Beresford – ’threatened to boycott the show’, the Mirror reports
ITV bosses instead decided to invite him onto Lorraine , and ITV sources insisted this was an “editorial decision” and played down threats of a walkout.
However, one GMB insider told The Mirror: “Piers has made it quite clear what he thinks of GMB since he flounced out. Barely a day goes by without him sniping that ratings are down, and that he was the best thing about the show.
“So it’s no surprise there are some who felt reluctant to promote his new gig and threatened to stop working if he came on. There’s also a lot of loyalty for Alex.”
Piers stormed off the show last year after Alex expressed outrage that the 57-year-old didn’t believe The Duchess of Sussex’s claim she had felt suicidal. Piers was axed from the show when he refused to apologise. Earlier this week, he claimed the Duchess had written to ITV’s chief executive, Dame Carolyn McCall, demanding his head on a plate.
Piers revealed at the time: “As [Alex] delivered his censorious lecture, implying my only motivation for disbelieving Ms Markle’s outlandish interview claims was because she ‘ghosted’ me four years ago after we’d been friendly for 18 months – I genuinely couldn’t care less about that, but it was informative as to her character, especially when I saw her do the same thing to many other people, including her own father – I felt the steam rising inside me.
“I don’t mind outside guests trying to make a name for themselves by whacking me like this, but I wasn’t going to sit there and take it from one of my own team, especially someone who I’ve gone out of my way to help whenever he’s asked me for advice about his career”.
Piers, who worked with meteorologists Laura and Alex won GMB, made a thinly veiled jibe at Alex in Laura’s birthday tribute.
“Happy 40th Birthday to the fabulous @Lauratobin1,” Piers typed.
He then went on to remark about her figure by adding: “brilliant meteorologist, possessor of leather trousers (no apologies to any wokies offended).”
Piers then seemed to take aim at Alex as he finished the post by calling Laura a “thoroughly decent & loyal (ex) colleague. My kinda weather presenter.” “thoroughly decent & loyal (ex) colleague. My kinda weather presenter.”
Meanwhile, Piers Morgan has been gloating in the higher ratings generated from talkTV show ‘Uncensored’, which averaged 317,000 viewers during its first episode on Monday, as the television channel, owned by Rupert Murdoch, beat both Sky News and the BBC News channel during the same timeslot.
The presenter’s heavily promoted return to television won a 2% share of all television viewing at 8pm, with the audience peaking at 397,000 as curious viewers checked out the new offering but didn’t stay around for the full hour.
The new station, aided by an enormous advertising budget, was free of most of the technical issues which plagued last year’s launch of the rightwing GB News. Instead, viewers were treated to a heavily trailed interview with the former US president Donald Trump alongside a series of diatribes about “woke” policies, cancel culture and things you can’t say on television these days.
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“I was told, either you issue a public apology for effectively disbelieving Meghan Markle, because I had disbelieved what she had told Oprah Winfrey, or I had to give up the show that I loved,” Piers told the BBC’s Ros Atkins. “If they (ITV) had defended my right to free speech, then I wouldn’t have been asked to apologise or leave my job. Ofcom later came back and defended my right to free speech.”
Of his time at GMB, he told Ros that he “felt the show was on fire”, saying it created “a national debate about whatever the issues may be”. Piers added: “The sadness to me was ITV had always been unbelievably strong in protecting my right to express my honestly held opinions to the end – and then suddenly they lost their bottle.”
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