Piers Morgan by Emily Herbert Read Free Book Online

been stolen; this was followed up by the Hoare piece, which in turn led to a story from one James Hewitt, to the effect that he’d been the recipient of silent phone calls, too. Then came material about Diana’s affair with Hewitt, still not widely known about at the time.
    All of this mattered, not just for the entertainment of the nation but because Piers was still so very young. There had been plenty of grumbling about a lack of experience when he’d first got the job and yet, from the moment he took up the post, he’d been all but setting the news agenda. Meanwhile, he was careful to praise his reporters. ‘They are the ones who bring in the stories,’ he told The Spectator. ‘This isn’t false modesty; the only credit I would take is having the balls to run the stories.’
    Royal stories, especially those involving Diana, could be tricky to handle, too. Despite the public’s voracious appetite for anything involving ‘Shy Di’ (who came close to bringing the Monarchy down), they adored her and, while they would read scandalous stories about her, there was a line over which no paper nor editor should step. Alleging nuisance calls while maintaining a sympathetic aura wasn’t that easy, and there was a big risk in becoming the firstpaper to reveal Diana’s own extra-marital affairs but the News Of The World somehow managed to pull it off.
    â€˜On the Hewitt-Diana story, I held a council of war with my three top executives,’ recalled Piers. ‘I often do this because I’m only twenty-nine years old and I’m aware I have experienced journalists around, but I do have to make the final decision.’
    Then there was the issue of the Monarchy itself. At the time, the Republican movement in Britain was not a strong one but sometimes newspapers running anti-Windsor stories, especially those owned by the Australian-born Republican Rupert Murdoch, were accused of base motives. Piers, however, was having none of it.
    â€˜I totally believe in the Monarchy as an institution,’ he declared, ‘but I don’t agree with royals behaving like the rest of us. If we’re going to give them palaces to live in, then they should behave in a regal manner. Princess Diana’s come out of it well… she’s loved more than she ever was.
    â€˜My ultimate defence of stories is that they are 100 per cent true. I don’t make moral judgements. Sometimes my mother rings up and tells me to leave Diana alone. My grandmother will say, “That’s a revolting load of rubbish you printed this morning,” but, when I press her further, she will admit she found it entertaining.’
    And so did everyone else.
    Piers didn’t usually bring his age into anything and he sounded far more himself when defending the publication of the Bienvenida Buck/Sir Peter Harding story, describedby some people as a ‘sad’ case. Sir Peter had been forced to resign from his post and his estranged wife had been pictured looking distraught.
    â€˜I don’t think he’s a sad case at all!’ insisted Piers. ‘I’d do the same thing again tomorrow. He was the Chief of the Defence Staff, behaving in a way that was quite appallingly stupid for a man in his position and also compromising the job he was doing. All army officers had only recently been sent a memo saying that adultery would result in dismissal, yet, while the Gulf War was raging, he was wining and dining his mistress. It was hypocritical. I’m no great moraliser but I think it’s wrong for people in positions of power to commit adultery if, by so doing, they leave themselves or their jobs exposed. And it’s wrong if they’re preaching one thing and doing another.
    â€˜I’m not dictating to ordinary people but say a married woman sleeps with the village policeman, her husband finds out, there’s a fight and someone tells the News Of The World then we’ll