The columnist and broadcaster Piers Morgan hacked into Alastair Campbell’s bank accounts in order to destabilise the then Labour government, Tony Blair’s former spin doctor claimed last week at the High Court.
At the time, Morgan was the editor of the Daily Mirror. He allegedly told reporter Gary Jones in 1999 to find out details of Campbell’s mortgage payments.
The claims were made as part of the ongoing phone hacking trial in which more than 100 individuals, including Prince Harry, are suing Mirror Group Newspapers over claims of illegal activity.
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“Morgan’s two-faced conduct, in purporting to be a real ally of the prime minister and the Labour government, while all the time he and his senior team were using illegal means to find stories designed to destabilise that government, compounds the anger I feel about this,” Campbell told the court.
Morgan “has always denied any knowledge of phone hacking or illegal activity at the Daily Mirror when he was editor”, said the BBC. The controversial broadcaster is known for his outspoken views on subjects as varied as Meghan Markle, Phillip Schofield and Arsenal FC.
Here The Week takes a look at five things you may not know about Morgan.
His father died when he was a baby
Morgan’s Irish father, Vincent Eamonn O’Meara, died in a road accident when Morgan was 11 months old. “He came from Galway and he had a sister who moved to Offaly, and a lot of cousins in Dublin,” he said at the Irish Post Press Awards in 2019. “So I feel very Irish."
His mother Gabrielle, who is English, went on to marry Glynne Pughe-Morgan, and Piers took his surname. He was raised a Catholic and still describes himself as one, although he doesn’t go to confession because “it would take me too long”, he told the Financial Times in 2017.
He’s appeared in several films
Morgan has appeared in several films, such as “Men in Black: International”, “Entourage” and interviewing Will Ferrell in the 2012 comedy “The Campaign”. “I was only in it for, like, 30 seconds and you get these massive cheques every three months,” he told the FT.
He generally plays newsreaders or interviewers, but was forced to deny that he made a secret cameo in “Home Alone 2: Lost in New York”, in 1992, said The Independent, after his son Spencer highlighted the uncanny resemblance between Morgan and the homeless “pigeon lady”, played by Irish actor Brenda Fricker. “Chilled night watching Home Alone 2,” Spencer Morgan tweeted. “Always forget you’re in it @piersmorgan.”
He applied to be Donald Trump’s chief of staff
One of Morgan’s stranger job applications was perhaps his request to be Donald Trump’s chief of staff in an open letter published by the Daily Mail 2018.
He listed 10 reasons why he would be good at the job, saying the “key thing is to have someone at your side that understands you, has known you a long time, likes you and commands your respect”.
It was not to be, however, and the pair subsequently fell out in 2020 over Trump’s handling of the pandemic and the former president later blocked Morgan on Twitter, said The Independent.
He voted for the Animal Welfare Party in 2015
“The leaders of the three main parties, Cameron, Clegg and Miliband, wouldn’t inspire me to open a crisp packet,” Morgan wrote in 2015 in the Daily Mail when publicly deliberating over who to vote for. So instead, he opted for the Animal Welfare Party, which campaigns for animal rights, environment and health.
The party fielded four candidates in the election, including in Kensington, Morgan’s constituency. By voting for Professor Andrew Knight, a veterinary specialist, Morgan said he would raise awareness of the animal rights party as well as making his “fabulous and deeply beloved Grandmother very happy”.
He was fired by the Daily Mirror
Despite several high-profile faux pas during his tenure as editor of the Daily Mirror between 1995 and 2004, Morgan finally stepped down over a scandal involving fake photos. The photos, published in the newspaper, appeared to show British Army officers abusing Iraqi prisoners during the Iraq War, but were later revealed to be fake.
The Mirror ran an apology, but Morgan refused to admit the pictures were fake, even after the government said they had not been taken in Iraq but in the north-west of England, said The Guardian.
Morgan later appeared to brush off the incident. “I’ve been fired from big jobs before and always found it both character-building and financially lucrative,” he wrote in the Mail.
