Piers Morgan’s unconscionable twerpiness is now officially record-breaking. Britain’s Office of Communications, also known as Ofcom, received a record number of complaints in 2021, Deadline reports—and one-third of them were about Morgan’s vile response to Meghan Markle’s Oprah Winfrey interview.
Deadline reports that Morgan-related complaints drove this year’s spike. Specifically, viewers complained about his comments after Markle revealed to Oprah that she’d experienced suicidal thoughts as she acclimated to royal life and dealt with racism from all sides. Soon after the interview aired in March, Morgan appeared on Good Morning Britain, saying, “I don’t believe a word she says, Meghan Markle. I wouldn’t believe her if she read me a weather report.”
Of the more than 150,000 complaints Ofcom received this year, 54,595 pertained to Morgan’s comments about Markle—making the episode the most complained-about broadcast of the year. Markle’s original Oprah interview, Deadline notes, placed fourth on the list with just under 6,500 complaints.
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Morgan’s comments ignited a firestorm almost immediately after they aired in March. His colleague, weatherman Alex Beresford, called out his incessant diatribes—and the seemingly personal motivations behind them—on air in an instantly viral episode that ended with Morgan storming off the set during filming and later quitting his job.
Beresford noted Morgan’s claim that Markle “ghosted” him years ago after they’d gotten drinks together, not long before she met Prince Harry.
“I understand that you don’t like Meghan Markle,” Beresford said at the time. “You’ve made that so clear a number of times on this program. A number of times. And I understand that you’ve got a personal relationship with Meghan Markle, or had one, and she cut you off. She’s entitled to cut you off if she wants to. Has she said anything about you since she cut you off? I don’t think she has, but yet you continue to trash her.”
At first, Morgan appeared unbothered about his newfound unemployment. A day after his on-air hissy fit, he tweeted, “On Monday, I said I didn’t believe Meghan Markle in her Oprah interview. I’ve had time to reflect on this opinion, and I still don’t. If you did, OK. Freedom of speech is a hill I’m happy to die on. Thanks for all the love, and hate. I’m off to spend more time with my opinions.”
In September, however, Morgan demanded his job back after Ofcom ruled that his comments did not break the broadcasting code. “While we acknowledged that Mr. Morgan’s questions about the nature of racism had the potential to be highly offensive to some viewers, the conversations about race and racism in this program provided open debate on the issues raised by the interview,” the Office said in a statement. “Despite strong opinions expressed during the program, in Ofcom’s view any potential offense was justified by the context.”
“The restriction of such views would, in our view, be an unwarranted and chilling restriction on freedom of expression both of the broadcaster and the audience,” the Office added.
Morgan celebrated Ofcom’s decision in a column for The Daily Mail, calling it a “resounding victory for free speech” in a “woke-ravaged era.” He claimed that in the months after he refused to apologize for his comments and quit his job instead, some of Markle’s comments to Oprah had been proven false. (Representatives for Markle did not respond to The Daily Beast’s request for comment at the time.)
“Just one question remains: does this mean I get my job back?” Morgan wrote.
The answer, evidently, was a resounding “no.” But earlier this month, Morgan found a platform that seems to be a much better match for his particular brand of bile—he’ll soon host a show on Fox News. Morgan promises his show will be a “fearless forum for lively debate” that “celebrates the right of everyone to have an opinion”—which, in this writer’s opinion, sounds mind-numbing already.
