He was to be applauded for saying “Enough!” to copy control when a
transcript from a Richard and Judy interview came back littered with
absurd “corrections” (he printed the two versions alongside one another and
a humbled Richard Madeley phoned up to apologise). But what is perhaps most
attractive about Morgan is his energy. When he’s on form – and I’m sure he
can be a nightmare when he’s not – he’s one of those people who makes you
feel immeasurably more alive to be around. His whole family, it seems, is
the same way. He comes from one of those big extended clans of matriarchal
grannies and loads of aunts and uncles and cousins and nieces, “and we all
tend to be the life and soul of the party”. He also gets ragged something
rotten by his siblings, particularly his brother Jeremy (a major in the
Royal Regiment of Wales who was dispatched to Basra): “He takes no nonsense
at all from me about my ridiculous, shallow, showbusiness life.”
Like most former journalists-turned-celebrities, Morgan is far too alert to
the dangers of being wrong-footed to allow himself to be led into perilous
personal territory. He refuses point blank to talk about The Guardian
columnist Marina Hyde for whom he left his wife, Marion. In The Insider,
he refers to Hyde in the acknowledgements only as “My best friend, most
amusing companion, and unpaid but razor-sharp proof reader”. Private
Eye, among other publications, thought that Morgan’s private life was
fair game since he had no qualms about running similar stories about other
media figures (eg, Clarkson).
“You know, it’s just that I’ve never felt comfortable talking about a
relationship or my private life, and I always find that Hello! stuff
really gut-wrenching and never understood why people wanted to do it,” he
says. “Now obviously I was a rank hypocrite as an editor because I wanted
people to do that… but it’s a bit like when somebody would ask me, ‘How do
you feel about the snitches who ring up and offer dirt?’ And I would say,
‘Well, I used to hate them but be delighted that they were doing it.’ And
it’s the same with people spilling their guts out. I think they’re
ridiculous but I’m quite pleased that they do it. And with this new book [Don’t
You Know Who I Am? The story of how Morgan rose from the ashes to
conquer America and become a celebrity himself] I was told that it would be
nice to know who you’re with and what you were doing and who was sharing
this adventure with you. And that’s why I put Celia in this book because I
thought that, actually, not to do so would be unnecessarily – you know –
standoffish.”
There’s a whiff of disenchantment with his old tabloid world in the new book,
which opens with Boy Morgan – not yet 40 – suddenly feeling a bit like “a
semi-retired old fart, running around Sainsbury’s all day and watching DVDs,
because that’s what happens when you’ve come from a huge job and you’re
suddenly ex communicated from a big corporation – the reality of your life
is the mundanity.” At some point, “you just start thinking, ‘God, this is
really bad, you know I really need to sort myself out.’ At no stage was I
depressed [although it does read as though he was], it was more a sense of
listlessness and an increasing feeling of edginess and frustration about
what was I going to do for the rest of my career since I was only 39.”
Not only did Morgan find it increasingly intolerable to be asked “So what are
you doing?” after years of never having to explain himself, but when he got
together with his old mates at the Mirror, he felt out of the loop
and was simply unable to get excited about this or that scoop with him no
longer in the driving seat. He says now – and this is not going to endear
him to his former colleagues – that he doesn’t hang out with journalists
very often these days because he finds them “really aggressive. It’s quite
funny, I know. But I do find them really aggressive.”
In what way exactly? “If it’s been a really busy news day, they’re all
absolutely wired with adrenalin and aggression and competitive spirit and
it’s obviously the way I used to be. And I realise now why people had a view
of me when they saw me at those award shows and I got so fired up, so
competitive and so desperately wanted to win. And if I didn’t win, I’d just
be blindly in a rage about it and feel cheated for me, my staff and
everybody and now I can look back at it and laugh and think, ‘My God!’”
He makes no apologies for his editorship of the News of the World.
“There is a certain freedom of youth which makes the paper really exciting,
you know. Did I go over the top a few times? Definitely. Do I regret some
stuff? Definitely. It was only later as I got a bit older and had my own
life and started getting responsibilities that I began to rethink things,”
he says. “And writing the book, it was quite cathartic to look back on the
impact of some of those stories and the slightly carefree way that you dealt
with people’s lives. ”
Most journalists, in his experience, have to be hardbitten. One of his least
proud moments was being disappointed when Concorde crashed and there were no
celebrities on the plane. “It was full of German pensioners on a charter and
I reacted in a really offensive and ugly manner – pissed off because there
was no story. But when you go home and have a drink, you think, ‘I really
should not have reacted like that. A hundred people have died.’ But there’s
this protective shield of ‘I’m a journalist... I’m above human reaction in
this.’ And when you’re a newspaper editor I think you’re so completely
consumed with it that everything just becomes a story.”
It was the Mirror readers themselves, he says, slightly surprisingly,
who made him think more seriously about what he was doing. “I’m not talking
about all of them but as a rule of thumb, I found their letters and their
thought processes – the way they voted on issues on phone lines – a great
insight into the type of people they were. They were just more caring and
sensitive, and I think that evolved me completely.”
He believes that most newspapers misread the public’s appetite for stories
which crucify celebrities. “The worst hypocrites I know are editors and
senior journalists. I could tell you about the private lives of all of them
and they’d fill the News of the World for weeks,” he says. (But
then most members of the public would not be all that interested since they
hardly expect journalists to be pure as the driven snow.)
As regards his own affair, “Without being drawn into specifics, I would say
that my life experiences over the past ten years did radically alter my
moral code as an editor because I realised that human frailty can be
something that, you know, can pop up with everyone, and your ability to be
utterly censorial and moralistic about everybody else starts to look vaguely
ridiculous.
“Actually, I think what all journalists should do is lose their jobs and go
and live a normal life for a few years and then come back into it, because
they’d have a much better understanding about how real people think about
things and react.” Most people who have been involved in a massive scandal,
in his opinion – from Jonathan Aitken to Jeffrey Archer to Lord Levy to Jade
Goody – get almost universally positive reactions from the public. “The
media wants to say, ‘You are a disgusting human being and everybody thinks
so.’ The public says, ‘You did something stupid, but forget it – you’re
actually just like the rest of us.’ They are much less judgmental and not
into this media bombardment of hatred and fury and destroying people’s
lives.” And, in any case, he says, everyone’s a celebrity now.
