Newick, England
When I interviewed Rishi Sunak in February, I told him I thought his Rwanda plan for “stopping the boats” was an expensive, unworkable dud and offered him a £1,000 bet to be paid to a refugee charity that he wouldn’t get any asylum-seeker planes taking off before the next general election. To my surprise, the British prime minister clutched my outstretched hand and accepted the wager, sparking considerable revulsion. As the HBO comedian John Oliver put it: “Set aside the grossness on display here, imagine what a monster you have to be to put me in a position of genuinely wanting Piers Morgan to win something?” Now Sunak has admitted no planes will leave for Rwanda before July 4. Therefore, I told him on X that I’d like the £1,000 to go to the British Red Cross. But No. 10 responded that the PM won’t be paying up because a month ago, one failed asylum seeker, who didn’t arrive on a boat, volunteered to be put on a commercial flight to Rwanda with £3,000 of taxpayer money. This, as Sunak well knows, has nothing to do with his forced deportation plan. And the British public knows it, too: a YouGov poll revealed that 76 percent of Tory and Labour voters and 80 percent of Liberal Democrats say Sunak must settle up. His attempt to wriggle off the hook on such a disingenuous technicality leaves me in a quandary. The Red Cross expects £1,000. Is the UK’s wealthiest ever prime minister, worth an estimated £651 million, going to send it to them, or will I have to?
This wasn’t my first on-air gamble with a politician. In 2012, while at CNN, I bet President Bill Clinton $100 to a charity of the winner’s choice — in my case, Help For Heroes — that Europe would beat America in the Ryder Cup. Europe won, and the next morning, an envelope sealed “WILLIAM JEFFERSON CLINTON” arrived at my New York office. A note inside read: “Dear Piers, congratulations on the Miracle at Medinah — a truly remarkable comeback by the European Ryder Cup team. You called it right and I’m happy to settle our bet. Help for Heroes is doing valuable work with wounded British servicemen and women, and I’m proud to support their efforts. All my best to you. Sincerely, Bill.” Also enclosed was a personal check to H4H for $100.
The problem with “surefire” bets, like a Labour election victory, is they’re not always surefire. When I was at journalism college, a fellow student wanted to supplement his £800 grant. So when he noticed Steve Davis was beating Dennis Taylor 7-0 in the 1985 World Snooker Championship and was 1-8 odds- on favorite, he bet his whole grant on Davis, to win himself an extra £100. Taylor triumphed 18-17, and my mate spent the rest of the year living in a tent. Current odds on Keir Starmer winning? 1-8 on.
After I took my Piers Morgan Uncensored show off TV to be digital-only, conventional broadcaster friends thought I’d lost my mind. But my interview with Fiona Harvey, the real-life alleged stalker Martha from the smash-hit Netflix series Baby Reindeer, is the perfect illustration of why I did it. So far, it’s been watched 13 million times on our YouTube channel, where we have nearly 3 million subscribers. Those viewing figures would have made it the second-most-watched program on UK television last year, after the coronation. I’ve gone where the future is: Americans now spend 10 percent of their TV-watching time on the YouTube app on their smart TVs. And I’m loving being a YouTuber, or as one of my sons put it — in words that will doubtless resonate with my media critics — the Justin Bieber of journalism.
I’ve had a few stalkers myself. One sent lengthy lurid letters to my local village pub which the landlady, Beryl, would gleefully present in vast piles each time I came in, saying: “Piers, your one-fan mail!” Another, dismayingly, given her unfortunate aesthetic deficiencies, got into the Daily Mirror newsroom on the twentieth floor of Canary Wharf by convincing security she was my wife, and strode over to my then editor’s office to ask what I wanted for dinner. To be on the safe side, I didn’t give Fiona Harvey my phone number. I gave her Hugh Grant’s.
I fell out with Donald Trump over our explosive last interview which led him to declare: “Piers Morgan’s so dead, he’s catching flies!” But recently my phone flashed up a call from “Palm Beach” and when I answered, a familiar voice greeted me. “Is that my man Piers? This is Donald…” For the next twenty minutes we chatted away like nothing had happened. Trump is convinced he’s heading back to the White House in the greatest comeback since I survived the flies. I wouldn’t bet against it.
This article was originally published in The Spectator’s July 2024 World edition.
