Free Piers Morgan by Emily Herbert

revealed that Sheryl Kyle was pregnant with Paul Gascoigne’s child, the Guardian’ s diarist rang to ask him to congratulate the happy couple. Piers didn’t call back, although he did so the very next day.
    ‘The Daily Mail has confronted Gazza with the fact that I’m the father,’ he said. ‘But look, I’ve only met Sheryl twice in my life. It’s so preposterous that I’m finding it quite funny [but] Gazza’s in a terrible state. It’s splendid that the papers want to delve into my private life, but they really should leave him alone. Listen, if the baby was mine, don’t you think I’d be the first to buy myself up?’
    It was all stated in as joking a fashion as he could manage (and this was far from the last time that rival newspapers would take an in-depth look at his personal life), but Piers had clearly come under a great deal of pressure: to go from wunderkind to whipping boy was not a pleasurable experience. There was an increasing sense that something had to give, and so it did.
    The news broke towards the end of August 1995: Piers Morgan had resigned from the News Of The World and was to edit the Daily Mirror instead. Again, the hand of Kelvin MacKenzie could clearly be seen to be moving behind the scenes; after a brief spell at BSkyB, he himself had moved to the Mirror Group, where he was running the television interests. He would have understood just how humiliating Piers found it to be so publicly ticked off and he also knew that his protégé, while a maverick, was brilliant at getting scoops and attracting publicity, both for himself and his papers.
    And so the deal was struck: the current editor of the Mirror – Colin Myler – became managing editor of both the Daily and Sunday Mirror, a management role rather than an editorial one, and the Boy Wonder signed upto the team. ‘I have been offered the editorship of the Daily Mirror and I have accepted,’ announced Piers in a somewhat chilly statement. ‘I have given in my notice.’
    At this, Rupert Murdoch was livid: just a couple of months earlier, he’d been slapping Piers Morgan down and now here was his editor doing pretty much the same in return. Initially, it seemed as if he would try to force him to stay – after all, he had between a year and eighteen months left on his contract and it seemed News International was in no mood to release him.
    ‘Piers Morgan remains the editor of the News Of The World under the terms of the contract,’ was the stiff statement from the company. But it was no good; his heart was no longer in it and Piers wanted out. The Mirror executives themselves were determined to get their man; they announced that Myler would continue to edit the paper until he was able to take up the appointment. Clearly, it was just a matter of time.
    Meanwhile, over at the Mirror, there were concerns among the staff on the ground, too. Piers had spent most of his professional life on the Sun and the News Of The World, both Conservative supporters. The Mirror , on the other hand, was Labour through and through. Previously, he had also admitted to voting Tory and his new staff expressed alarm that he might try to impose his views on them.
    ‘The big fear is for the left-wing leanings on the paper,’ revealed one journalist, who refused to be named. ‘There must also be worries that we’ll be going downmarket withmore kiss-and-tell stories. Although we’re a tabloid at the lower end of the market, we’ve always managed to cover the serious news in a way our readers would understand.’
    But there was no backing out: Piers was on his way. Then came another slew of headlines about his youth because, at the tender age of thirty, he would now become the youngest editor of a daily newspaper. At the same time, the News Of The World finally accepted the fact that he was leaving and appointed the paper’s deputy (Phil Hall) as editor in his place.
    In the event, Piers became editor of the Mirror less than two months after he