Piers Morgan, Broadcaster

0:00This is an iHeart Podcast. Guaranteed human. As a restaurant genius, I know the experience starts long before the food hits the table. Genius by Global Payments makes it easy. Digital menus and price updates in real time. No reprints, no surprises. The kitchen and floor stay perfectly in sync. So every dish arrives exactly as it should. From game day crowds to memorable meals. Big League reliability for any business. That's genius. I turned off news altogether. I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything. It's the rage bait. It feels like it's trying to divide people. We got clear facts.

0:50Maybe we can calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News, reporting for America. Ruthie's Table 4 is now a book. Paul McCartney, Michael Caine, Kamala Harris, David Beckham, Tina Fey, Elton John, and many more. It's full of stories, beautifully designed, and a celebration of the way food connects us all. It's available now wherever you buy your books. Ruthie's Table 4 brought to you by Sky and Montclair. I've probably interviewed three or four thousand people in my life. My sort of calculation after all that time is if you have the unconditional love of one parent it's enough to power you to the top.

1:42It's much harder if you have no unconditional love from anybody and the ones that make it from that background of that environment have really I'm I'm all struck about it.

1:57Everyone knows Piers Morgan as a journalist, editor, and fearless interviewer. But I know him also as a person who loves food. Having spent his childhood in the pub his family owned in East Sussex, who can describe in detail what makes a great restaurant. Piers and I have different professions, but we do have much in common. His ingredients are words. Mine are olive oil and basil. We both work to strict deadlines, opening hours for me and news to be reported for him. Most important, though, for both of us is the hunger for a story. Whether talking to someone in the studio or at a table in the River Cafe, we're here together on a beautifully sunny day to share our stories about food and family, the world we're in, what could be better?

2:48I love that. That's a nicer intro. Thank you, Ruthie. Well, it's true. It's authentic. I think we should start by that you touched on when I grew up. So he's telling me what to do. Well, no, I don't want to interview you. No, tell me. When you mentioned the pub, my family, we do have this umbilical cord, which is your brilliant manager, Charlie Pullen, at the River Cab. He's been with you how long? Probably 27 years. Right. Yeah, 30 years. So Charlie's family and my family were the best of family friends down in this East Sussex village area, Fletching and Newark. my parents ran the griffin in but you bought you bought it from no did he buy it from you sold it to the pullens you sold it so we sold the griffin in to the pullen family who then transformed it my brother rupert became their manager um and in fact he's going back soon which is a nice little symmetry to the whole thing yeah charlie you know i know charlie when he was this big and all his brothers and his family his mom and dad and so i've always whenever I come in here and I see Charlie Bullock, he takes me back to the village.

3:51He's devastated that he's not here. But what was it like growing up then? What was it like having the pub as your back? Well, I love village life. Yeah. What do you love about it? I loved the egalitarian nature of a pub. In those days, a country pub was very simple. Everyone would go in. So in our area, we'd have the lord of the manor. This is on a Sunday, or is it every day? We were living there. We were living there. So I would see, you know, you'd look through the door and you'd see the lord of the manor and the local carpenter. And it was very egalitarian. It didn't matter who you were. So you could rule them during the day, but then you'd drink together at night.

4:26Yes. Yeah. Good old Britain. Exactly. And what I liked about it was as long as you could stand around and have a conversation, everyone was kind of the same. Yeah. You were in there and all types of people from all backgrounds. And I remember being about six or seven and the school, my local primary school in Fletching, the village, sending back a warning letter to my mother that I was smelling of alcohol. Age six. Were you sipping a bit of the alcohol? It's become an habitual thing in later life, but at six a bit of a concern. Six is a kind of, yeah. It was because I used to earn pocket money by doing the bottling up.

5:02So all the empties had to be refilled. I would remove the empties, go down to the cellar, bring up the full ones, and I would get 50p, 50p. An hour? A dollar. A dollar. A dollar for about an hour's work. But, of course, it would leave you entering the cellar stinking a bit. So I'd arrive at school age six, and they'd be like, this kid has a problem. He's six years old. They would call social services or something. Yeah. That's very sad. But did you like that? I mean, did you think it wasn't sure? I loved Billy's life. It seemed very, like, when I look back on it now, very innocent, very harmless.

5:32And that was Billy's life. That was Billy's life. But you did have a tragedy, you know, of your father. Yeah. My father died when I was one, so I was very, very young. Yeah, and your mother was doing? My mother was, she was just at the time 20 years old, pregnant with my. 20? Yeah. She was pregnant with you? Pregnant with my brother. Oh, I see. Who became an army officer. Yeah. And it was incredibly traumatic, obviously, for her and the family. How did he die? He died, he had a condition involving ulcers perforated, and then now it would be easily treatable. Yeah. Back then in the 60s, it was a killer.

6:09And it was very sad. He was in his early 30s. I never knew him, obviously. But my dad came along who swept up, you know, my mom and these two young boys. And he's been my dad ever since. So what was he doing? What was his job? He was actually running nightclubs in the south of France. He gave it up. He gave it up to come and take care of us, which when I look back on it now, it was an amazing sacrifice to make. He was in his mid-20s. He was in love. Your mother must have been. Yeah, she was quite something. Quite something. And is quite something, yeah. She's still... Yeah, they're both going strong, both in their 80s, looking very glam.

6:46And do you remember food that you ate as a kid? Well, they were both great cooks in the pub. They were? Yeah, both remain great cooks. So whenever I go down, we have amazing roasts or we have amazing dinners or amazing fry-up breakfasts. And it all came from when they ran the pub. They used to do seven days a week food. Did your parents, your stepfather and your mother, have other children? Yeah, so another brother and sister came in. So there were four of you growing up. Yeah. And all in this village, all in the pub. Did all of them have a relationship with the food in the pub? Yeah, I mean, my sister's a very good cook.

7:21My brother became the manager of the Griffin Inn, so he was supervising the restaurant, and is now going back there, actually. So that pub has been a huge part of our family's life for a long time. But, yeah, I've always been gravitated to, this is why I love the River Cafe. I'm not just saying that because you are the River Cafe but I love the simplicity of so much of what you do it's beautifully cooked but it's nothing like I don't like going places where it's overly fancy or you know all the sort of million tasting any of that kind of thing I like coming here I would say the worst two words in the English language are tasting menu yes I like the simplicity of what you do beautifully cooked and that's the magic I think of River Cafe were you exposed to Did you come to London?

8:08Did you go to Greek restaurants or Indian restaurants? Yeah, I mean, when I came to London, I was about 19. But before that, did your parents... No, not really, no. Yeah, and did you ever... I didn't go abroad before I was about 16. I was going to ask you, did you go abroad? No, no, no. We didn't have a lot of money. We weren't poor and we never... I don't remember ever being deprived. Yeah. But when I look back, I don't think... My first foreign holiday was probably about 16. Yeah. Our holidays were shrimping on Hastings Beach. Yeah. And I loved it. But your father was in south of France. Well, he came back and he became a publican.

8:39And so they ran the country pub. And then, yeah, my dad then ran a fine food business. He was the intermediary. We'd go to markets and get food and game and poultry and fish and stuff for hotels and restaurants. He did that for many years, ran his own business, did fantastically well. And now he's, I call him a professional gardener now. He now spends most of his time in the garden, which looks unbelievable. So they're very creative, talented people, my parents, who love their food, love entertaining. It's always been the bedrock of our lives. And were politics part of your discussion as well?

9:15Did you talk about… I'm the least opinionated. But I always joke I'm the least opinionated member of my family. Oh, I'd like to meet the other ones. Well, Charlie can tell you, I'm actually being completely serious. They're all highly opinionated. But we try and steer clear of too much political stuff. Yeah. I think it'd be fair to say there are a few flashpoints we avoid. Yeah. When Mike Bloomberg talked about his family, growing up in his family, he said that they had an assignment, which was, and actually the Bidens were that way as well, apparently this Irish family, that at the dinner table, everybody had to kind of, one person would be chosen to say what they'd done that day.

9:54And he thought that was really good because it would make you think what you were doing that day. It was just something that I would want to report at the table. Well, I remember Rupert Murdoch has been a great mentor of mine. He used to, whenever they had meals as a family, they would just choose something in the news to debate. And I do that often with my kids. I've got four kids, 32 down to 14, and we often will just debate stuff. I encourage them. I say, look, we live in a weird world where people feel they can't express themselves freely. They can't express their own opinions about stuff.

10:25I said, you can't be suppressed in that way. We live in a great, thriving democracy. And you've got to be brave enough to say what you think and not worry about whether people like it or not. And I said, there's too much censorship that's gone on. I do a show now called Piers Morgan Uncensored. Uncensored, yeah. For a reason, because I want people to watch it and understand when I say things, I have no paymaster. I'm my own boss. This is my freely held opinion. You may not like it. And if you have a better opinion and you can change my mind, great, I'll listen to it. I'm very happy to change my mind if facts change or you present a more compelling argument.

11:02But this idea that we can live in a democracy like ours or America and you feel too afraid of consequence and backlash and intimidation and frankly bullying on social media to say what you really think, I think is a really tragic symptom of modern times. You could also argue, if I were going to, from a person maybe of a different, that we've had this in fascist countries for a long time. We had it in Argentina. We've had it in Chile. We've had it in, you know, Soviet Union. So that it's always been there. It has been part of those cultures, you know. And so that's also something that we always wanted to fight, wasn't it?

11:44The censorship imposed by governments. Democracy, free speech has to be the bedrock of a democracy. The freedom of speech and expression. In America, you have the First Amendment. It's a very powerful tool, which comes under attack a lot. And there's a lot of hypocrisy about the First Amendment, where people, one rule for their side and not for the others, and so on. I think you've got to be intellectually honest. I try and be intellectually honest. People may not like what I'm saying, but at least they can trust that it's an honestly held opinion. And I'm not saying it because I want to appeal to left or right or anybody else, because I don't want to be boxed into any of those places.

12:20I don't want to be partisan. I don't want to be seen as biased I want to be seen as somebody who will get everybody on have hopefully stimulating debate from people who care passionately about issues and let viewers decide I think that we'll talk more about because I do want to learn more about being an interviewer but I do think you I do think you listen I do think that watching you as I do very often that you're quite you get these two people together and there's that battle but you ask the questions but you do listen and i think that is something tribalism tribalism has become a big problem where i think people they they don't care if facts change that reflect negatively on their side they will stick intransigently to their position you know some people's idea of free speech is that you agree with everything that people say if they're saying what you want them to say yeah that's not free speech actually it's the ability to listen to someone saying the complete opposite to what you believe and accepting they have a right to believe it but we also make choices and you must make choices as an editor that every day you make choices about what you going who you're going to have on your show what you can and that is a freedom i think that you can say i had a conversation last night with my team we did a debate last night about iran and i felt that although we had attempted to book a fair debate between two different sets of people who had different views about this actually it felt in the moment throughout the hour debate it skewed a little bit three to one yeah and i said i'm not happy about that we had three people who were broadly against the war and we had one former british army officer in favor of what's going on i said that doesn't work for my for my show and we had a long chat about it i said no it's always got to be fair the whole point of what i do is if it's one against one or two against two or three against three whatever it may be it's got to be fair and you can't have the viewers watching you hang on they're ganging up on this guy that to me is not what i want my show to be about i want it to be a fair and spirited debate between equal numbers of people that have a view about something i can quite often tell the people who've been brought up with love yeah i think there's a quality of people that have had that confidence you were Well, I have a theory because I have probably interviewed three or four thousand people in my life of all different types.

14:45You've probably met them or eating in a restaurant. But, you know, I was interviewing on the Wimbledon News when I was a young journalist, trainee journalist. But my sort of calculation after all that time is if you have the unconditional love of one parent, it's enough to power you to the top. It's much harder if you have no unconditional love from anybody. And the ones that make it from that background and that environment, really, I'm awestruck about them. Because how you barrel through life coming from a place of no unconditional love anywhere is incredibly hard to fathom. But I think if you have one parent at least, preferably two, but one parent or a grandparent or whoever it may be, but there's someone that looks at you and says, I absolutely believe in you.

15:34and you can go as my mother gave me a postcard and it had a flock of seagulls and a hippopotamus flying with them and it just had a headline ambition knows no bounds and it's still on my desk and she gave me that when I was in my teen years I have one which was never give a party without margaritas that's a good one I actually brought one with me because I was checking earlier no I was checking River Cafe moments in my life and i found something which i thought was great and it was two lines but it was the memorial you did here for ed victor yeah who was my wife celia's literary agent and we used to go out with him a lot and he was one of the big men great characters big men and you had a lovely party here yes and um there were two things that came out from people talking about him yeah one One was Dylan Jones, who was an editor of GQ, a great friend of mine, who quoted Ed as saying, I perceive life as a long highway littered with green lights, which I thought was a brilliant phrase.

16:38And it really appealed to my eternal optimism. You know, you are really glass half full or glass half empty. Your first thought of any difficult challenge is either positive or negative. And people rarely stray from their natural reactions. They tend to be pretty negative or pretty positive. And when I get a negative burst, I'm always trying to say, come on, unless you're actually dead or terminally ill, there's a way out of everything, as I've proven over the years. But the other thing which I really liked was Nigella Lawson. Yes. Ed once asked how I was. And when I began to tell him, he stopped me and said, Nigella, if somebody asks you how you are, they don't ever actually want to know.

17:21Oh, yeah, I remember that too. I thought it was care. Somebody asks you how they don't really care. They don't really care.

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18:08Learn more about this landmark celebration at America250.org. I turned off news altogether. I hate to say it, but I don't trust much of anything. It's the rage bait. It feels like it's trying to divide people. If we got clear facts, maybe we can calm down a little. NBC News brings you clear reporting. Let's meet at the facts. Let's move forward from there. NBC News, reporting for America. When it comes to advancing your education, you have more options than you think. At Rasmussen University, we find ways to remove barriers, not build them. Like a new laptop if you're eligible and enroll in select online or on-campus programs.

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19:40Apple Vacations, where your story starts. So coming from this life of feeling that love, having the pub, this idyllic, and your mother coming out of a tragedy, I can't imagine the tragedy of being pregnant and having a little child and then growing up here. What happened when you left? I mean, when you left that community, when you came to London, was it London that you came to? And how did that, did you live by yourself? I went to journalism college in Harlow in Essex and lived with a family there, as we all did on the course. A family you knew? I was a local Essex family, which was great. They were lovely to me.

20:21What did you learn in journalism school? Do you remember? Well, I learned the basics of journalism, which were really helpful, like shorthand. Now, nobody uses shorthand anymore. It was an invaluable tool. Shorthand's actually great. I can still do it a little bit. But now everyone uses recorders, so it's a different thing. I think I learned, the one thing I learned about my whole journalism career was embedded from that early training, which was, it actually plays into my brother's unofficial regimental motto, the Royal Regiment of Wales. Another motto. Yeah. We have to write all these mottos down.

20:55You'd like this one because I bet it applies here. Is it as good as the margaritas? It's the seven Ps. P, okay, that's the same thing. Seven Ps. Okay, one. Prior planning and preparation. Yeah, like that. Prevent piss poor performance. oh did he make that up the piss board it's an unofficial regimental motto but i like it yeah and that was instilled into us you can never do enough preparation yeah i well that i agree with i think you would say the same here i can't i would say the same before a big interview or anything but i know that when i have to do something that i'm nervous about and everybody says relax it's going to be fine that's i went on jimmy fallon yeah and i was so wound up about how I was going to do it.

21:35And the worst advice that people would give me on the day was just be yourself. And I don't know how to, you know, I didn't know what I was supposed to do with that. And so instead I just kind of locked myself in a room and read every page of the book and worked. And then he came in and then he was amazing. But, you know, it was warm and gave me a hug and we're going to do this. But it was having done that that I could then relax. But everybody's different. I don't think you can wing it. In a kitchen, in a newsroom, on a sports field. They'll all tell you. My favorite athlete, sportsman, are people like a very good friend of mine who's now Cristiano Ronaldo, who's a football player.

22:14Is he a friend of yours? Very good, yeah. And it became, through the most random thing, where he messaged me one day, he's the most followed human being on Instagram in the world. He is, isn't he? How many followers? 650 million followers. You're kidding. 25 % more than any other human being on the planet. So he's probably the biggest star in the world. I better follow him. He probably needs another person. Probably does. Yeah. You can get on with it. But he loves his food. But he just came from absolutely nothing. His dad had died when he was very young. He'd been in the Portugal-Angola War, and he'd turned to drink afterwards, and it was very sad for the family.

22:51And never really saw Cristiano become the superstar that he was, and that really moved him. The first time we interviewed, he got very emotional. But he contacted me. It's the most random connection. through Instagram, he messaged me one day out of the blue, I'd never met him, to say he loved my crime documentaries where I sit down with American serial killers and psychopaths and he wanted to talk to me about them. So he rang me the next day and we had an hour and a half conversation about psychopaths. That's great. He actually contacted. And then after that we became really good friends. We've been messaging each other all the time.

23:25I've done three big interviews with him. But he is the absolute Templar, I would say, of the seven Bs. He is somebody that leaves nothing to chance. Everything is incredibly well practiced. Everything. He's the first in, last out. He's in his 40s now. He's still breaking records, still in the pursuit of greatness, of immortality. He wants to improve all the time. All he cares about is getting better. And he's 41 years old. Just keep going. And he's broken every record in Magic. Won everything in the game. Just for that. I love that. And I interviewed Novak Djokovic recently. Same thing. greatest tennis player of all time same mentality you know could remember he told me about being in belgrey when nato attacked um and the bombs were raining over the family home and they had 10 the equivalent of 10 pounds to spend on food a week and now he's the greatest tennis player that's ever lived and worth gazillions but he's never forgotten i mean they both talked about hunger and how the one thing cristiano said he can't give his own son who's now playing for portugal age 15 is a very good player he said the one thing i can't give him is actual hunger yeah and he told me this fabulous story that when he was 12 he was so hungry he went to the sporting lisbon academy in portugal age 12 and very gifted player but he was starving all the time and eventually him and his mate used to walk down the road and wait outside the back of mcdonald's and two ladies who worked at mcdonald's would take pity on them and give them burgers and he was telling me this story and i said have you ever you ever know ever seen these women he went no he said i'd love to meet we launched this huge hunt for these two women no we never found them so we assumed they'd either died or moved away whatever and the last time i saw christiana in riyadh uh last year he suddenly said pierce he said i i met one of the mcdonald's ladies i went what he said lisbon airport i was walking through and she came up to me she went i'm one of the mcdonald's ladies and he said he was going to go and take care of them.

25:25And what a lovely story, you know. What goes around comes around, you know, that you have that connection. When you went to work, the first job was at...? My first proper job was the Stretman Tooting News in Tooting Broadway. That local newspaper. Yeah, and then I went to the Wimbledon News. Was that an up that was going up? Yeah, it was a bit... Is Wimbledon higher than the Stretman? It was deemed a little bit... Journalistic. Yeah, a little... I was moving up in the world. Tooting was right in the middle of Tooting Broadway. It was carnage to start with. The crime alone in that area then was rife.

25:57But it was a very interesting beat to cover. So I used to go to the police stations and sit down with the police once a week and what's happened on your patch. I loved it all. And then I went to the Wimbledon News and then I remember my first big scoop was I infiltrated security at Wimbledon Tennis. Oh, yeah. So we had a tip. They were infiltrating. Yeah, we had a tip. if you go through that fence between this time and that time they don't guard it yeah so we went through with the photographer i ended up getting into the royal box where a famous england cricket legend called colin cowdry was there and served me a gin and tonic not knowing who i was and then i went down to the players dressing room and was actually in there with some of the top players this is back in the in the early 80s and we could be john mackenroe is that later probably mackenroe era and they were all like what are you doing here and i was like oh you know anyway we then did a big expose front page expose wimbledon security scandal which got picked up you managed to breach the security yeah and we did but we did him a massive favor we said yeah yeah could have been a terrorist anyway they responded by banning me for life oh it's okay go the chairman was a guy called baza huddingham i don't know what happened to baza baza huddingham anyway he sent me a letter banning me from the orlington club for life i don't think they enforce it i Because I've been back.

27:15You've been back to Wimbledon. I thought it was a bit graces. I'd actually done them a favour. I love the thing, you know, talking about mottos and speeches that I was reading because a friend of mine is giving a commencement address in the States. And Federer, do you know that when he gave his speech at Harvard for commencement, he said something like, you know, I am one of the great tennis players. I will say that, you know. But I just want you to know you can look at all the games that I've won and then just look at all the games that I've lost and how many games I've lost. And his whole point was that, you know, failure is part of the deal.

27:51I think you learn so much more from failures. Everyone's your friend when you're successful. I've had great times of success and great plummeting falls and I've actually much preferred the falls. It kind of sorts out the Christmas card list. You work out who probably would turn up at your funeral, who your proper mates are. you realize how important family is because they're always at like a ring fencing protective umbrella and also the value of a local pub yeah you know back to the pub back to the pub where everyone no one cares okay so back to food did you ever you know when you were in this world of were you on fleet street was that i did one of two shifts in fleet street only that was news of the world uh well i was the sun's show business the sun's correspondent yeah so i did the showbiz column.

28:39So, wow. Did you go out for a lot of... I had the best life. Yeah, what was that like? Did you go out for dinner? Where did you eat? Well, in those days, we had unlimited expense accounts. I flew around the world, first class or business class, stayed in five-star hotels. What paper was that? The Sun. That was Murdoch. It was the biggest selling paper. It was selling four million copies at the time. And it was a fantastic life. I went to interview the biggest stars in the world. Would you do it over food? Would you do it over a meal? Yeah, yeah. What did you learn about people interviewing them in a restaurant?

29:07Would you... That alcohol whole loosens tongues. I was quite surprised there wasn't a couple of Legronis sitting here. Another motto. He offered you a drink. You said no. We did offer you a drink. I don't think we have to worry about loosening or talk. I don't think you do, no. But I think if you can get people in there. I actually would prefer to have a social encounter with somebody the day before I may interview them. Oh, you do? So you establish a rapport. I remember Bill Clinton. I interviewed him after he stopped being president. But I interviewed him for CNN. And it was going to be a live hour-long thing.