Piers: the legend, the lore and the legacy

The Independent's Editor-in-Chief Simon Kelner feels that Fleet Street - and the Mirror - will be poorer without Piers Morgan

"I hope I am sitting near Piers Morgan," Jeremy Clarkson told me in the foyer of our New York hotel. "Then you'll have a story," he added, "because I'm going to punch that little shit's lights out." It was the night before Concorde's final excursion across the Atlantic, and, as well as supersonic pop stars, actresses, politicians, and leading figures from industry, British Airways had invited a few journalists along.

"I hope I am sitting near Piers Morgan," Jeremy Clarkson told me in the foyer of our New York hotel. "Then you'll have a story," he added, "because I'm going to punch that little shit's lights out." It was the night before Concorde's final excursion across the Atlantic, and, as well as supersonic pop stars, actresses, politicians, and leading figures from industry, British Airways had invited a few journalists along.

As it turned out, I had a window seat next to Morgan, and the tall figure of Clarkson was immediately in front of him. The exchanges between the two were hardly Wildean - "You may be big, Clarkson, but you'll go down like a sack of shit," established the level of repartee - and Clarkson was just about to offer Morgan outside when he remembered we were at 35,000 feet. He contented himself with casually tossing a glass of water over the editor of the Daily Mirror. Some six months later, at the conclusion of the British Press Awards, Clarkson fulfilled the promise he had made in New York, landing a sweet right-hander to Morgan's forehead and breaking his own finger in the process.

As we can see, not everyone was fond of Morgan. Clarkson had a particular antipathy, the Mirror having published pictures of him embracing someone who wasn't his wife. There were others, David Yelland (former editor of The Sun), Ian Hislop and Cherie Blair among them, who had different reasons not to care for him. But if anyone was suited for the fickle, rough-and-tumble world of red-top tabloid journalism, it was Morgan, one day pictured with his arm round a celebrity, the next morning trashing them in his newspaper. He made his reputation as Friend to the Stars, he went on to become a celebrity in his own right, and departed the scene as the scourge of the Government and at the centre of a national political scandal.

One of Morgan's qualities, alongside his remarkable indefatigability, was his ability to operate effectively, and be perfectly at ease, across the various milieu that a tabloid editor must inhabit. Thus his blokey charm would be employed at showbiz lunches and dealing with the demands of soap stars, sportsmen and their agents, while his brand of populist rhetoric would score points off cabinet ministers on Question Time or the Today programme.

He would, it's fair to say, have been a better editor of The Sun than the Mirror. His background, and instincts, were at odds with the pro-Labour traditions of the Mirror. He was a Thatcher-supporting child of a Home Counties family. One of his mentors and journalistic heroes was Kelvin MacKenzie, and he becomes almost misty-eyed with admiration when he talks of Rupert Murdoch.

Nevertheless, even his most implacable enemies would agree that his nine-year spell as editor of the Mirror has been, journalistically if not commercially, successful. His judgement has gone spectacularly missing on occasions, notably when he believed that "filling his boots" with Viglen shares on the advice of his city desk was no different from plunging on a tip from the racing editor for the 2.30 at Catterick. He was lucky to keep his job then, protected by the benevolence of his chairman, Sir Victor Blank. His other mistakes have been mostly ones of tone, or of pushing things too far, but a tabloid editor's not doing his or her job if things are always played safe. He existed within the most ruthlessly demanding sector of a highly competitive industry, and his job was to make a splash, create a noise, get his paper noticed.

This he did, probably better than any editor in recent times. He has regularly out-scooped The Sun, while his decision, post-September 11, to eschew showbiz tittle-tattle and celebrity-driven "news" stories in favour of a more serious agenda, and then to take up a position against the Iraq war, gave the Mirror a real point of difference and made it often the most talked-about paper in Britain. Morgan was despondent that an increase in sales didn't follow the re-positioning of the Mirror as a more serious newspaper. He said to me a while ago: "What do you do? We've got all this terrific stuff in the paper, and you put bloody Jordan on the front page and circulation goes up 100,000."

There is an argument, of course, as to whether it was a commercial error to take the Mirror upmarket, whether it was for the greater glory of Piers Morgan and, in following an agenda that was more editorially satisfying, he misjudged the tastes and interests of his readers. But at least he tried something different, and there should be no reason why John Pilger and Jonathan Freedland cannot exist alongside the 3am Girls in an intelligent popular newspaper.

A strange thing happened at this time, however. At the very moment that Morgan proclaimed the age of the celebrity was over, he was fast on the way to becoming one himself, with regular appearances on television and, lately, his own series in which he interviews, yes, celebrities. There are many contradictions in Morgan's time as editor of the Mirror, but it has been striking that his surgically-executed dismissal provoked a surprising amount of genuine sympathy from those who had hitherto been his rivals. Even the Daily Mail, the day after his sacking, published a supportive editorial. It was not simply a case of journalists sticking up for one of their own. Neither was it necessarily in recognition of what he had achieved during his editorship. It was more a sense of outrage over the imbalance in suffering the consequences of mistakes between the media and the Government.

Of course, with such incendiary material as these pictures, Morgan should have established beyond any doubt their bona fides. And of course he should have come clean as soon as he had doubts about their veracity, and then apologised. But contrition is not one of Morgan's most notable traits, and he knew that these pictures, like Andrew Gilligan's 6.07 broadcast, illustrated a wider truth. In the end it was not enough: it was not sufficient to explain it away as an "accurate representation". Facts have to be true, pictures have to be real. It is as simple as that.

But it is not a non sequitur to ask: what of the deceptions of others, which have taken us into a conflict that has claimed many thousands of innocent lives? The dossier that was passed off as authoritative but turned out to have been cobbled together from a student's thesis posted on the internet? Or the 45-minute warning? Or the existence of Iraq's weapons of mass destruction? Or Saddam's attempts to get uranium from Niger? Or the David Kelly tragedy? As yet, no one in government has paid the price for their culpability, unlike Gavyn Davies, Greg Dyke, Andrew Gilligan and, now, Morgan.

Morgan told me some years ago that he had already thought of the title of his autobiography: it was to be called "The Youngest Editor Ever to be Sacked". He knew that, walking a tightrope every day, it was only a matter of time before he fell off. When the end came, it was swift and brutal, but hardly unexpected.

Fleet Street will be a less colourful place without him, and the Mirror will be poorer without his chutzpah and energy, whatever their American investors may think. There will be many, particularly within the Government, who will rejoice over his departure. But others, possibly even Jeremy Clarkson, will mourn the loss of a sparring partner.

Showman of the red tops: Morgan's enthusiastic editorship delivered scoops, says the celebrity PR guru Max Clifford

piers was sat in San Lorenzo's restaurant at the bottom of Wimbledon Hill in south-west London, and the lobster lasagne that he was forking down tasted all the better for what I had just told him. I had invited him to dinner, after mentioning that I had a little something for him. Editors know that I don't waste time. "Someone's pregnant," I told him, while sitting on one of the biggest stories of 1999.

"Anybody worthwhile?" asked Piers.

"Have you heard of Cherie Blair?"

"Nooooo!"

When you tell Piers about a big exclusive it is like Arsenal have scored the winning goal in the FA Cup final. One of the things about him is his passion for the newspaper game. A lot of other editors are just extremely grateful for a story, whereas he is literally jumping out of his chair.

I first met Piers when he was showbiz writer on The Sun, but got to know him better when he became editor of the News of the World, at the age of 28. He thought he was brighter and sharper than everybody else and often he was. One of the great stories we worked on was a kiss-and-tell by Lady Bienvenida Buck that led to the downfall of the former Chief of Defence Staff, Sir Peter Harding. Piers and I took Lady Buck to lunch at Claridge's and she warned us that she was very "friendly" with a lot of the old boy network who would be in there dining with their wives. Lady Buck told us: "When I walk in the room, just have a look at the reaction." Sure enough, the old boys were almost diving under the tables. When Piers moved to the Mirror from the News of the World nine years ago, I was determined to give him a good start. He said: "It's a big new challenge, give us as much help as you can." I did because I liked the guy. There were situations where we could have got more money from other papers, but I work with people I like.

One of the major stories after Piers joined the Mirror was the revelation by a "friend" of Julia Carling about her husband Will's relationship with the Princess of Wales. The story that Princess Diana had a private phone on which she was calling the England rugby captain up to six times an hour was big news at the time. Another story that made Piers happy was the so-called Higgygate affair. This was when Stuart Higgins, then the editor of The Sun, published what it claimed were video pictures of James Hewitt and Princess Di, who was apparently taking off her sweatshirt and hurling a cushion at him. It turned out that the subjects were from an agency called Susan Scott Look-Alikes who had been filmed for a spoof that they hoped to sell to a TV comedy show. The maker of the film got in touch with me, and I gave Piers the story. He loved it because Stuart was his biggest rival. But had it been Piers who had made the cock-up, I probably would not have broken the story. I would have marked his card and everybody would have been taken care of. The mistake in Higgygate was light relief, not a sackable offence. It was far different to the one Piers has just made. He took chances and it was that gambling that eventually brought him down. But if you added caution to all his other qualities, he wouldn't be Piers Morgan.

Piers always said that if he was ever in trouble I would be the first person he would call. It's a shame he didn't - whether I could have helped him I don't know, but I would certainly have tried. We haven't seen the last of him, though. He loves television and has got the ego, knowledge and ability to make a real success of it. There's a hug market for programmes about big scoops, and if he owned the production company that made the documentaries he would get the lion's share of the money and the accolades. If you are going to take chances you need to work for yourself, taking risks as I have done for 40 years. I think Piers will thrive like that.

What now for the Mirror? The newspaper's historian Bill Hagerty on falling sales, saying sorry... and the search for a new editor

As a discredited Daily Mirror editor, it could have been worse for Piers Morgan. One of his similarly treated predecessors went to jail.

Sylvester Bolam's three-month incarceration in Brixton prison for contempt of court after the paper's florid reporting of the 1949 arrest of John Haigh, the acid bath murderer, was also more personally damaging than Morgan's removal from office. Bolam never regained his vigour, was cursorily dismissed within a couple of years and died three months after that at the age of 47. Morgan, not yet 40 and still crackling with the restless energy that sometimes fuelled decisions better left locked in the garage, still has a lot of living to do. But does the Daily Mirror?

The paper did not suffer from Bolam's error of judgement. "Bish" was in charge as it clattered past the seemingly unassailable Daily Express on the way to a daily sale in excess of five million. Nor have other editorial catastrophes succeeded in denting deeply or permanently the reputation of a Mirror that has never been afraid to arm-wrestle the establishment and, if necessary, adopt a view with which its readers had little sympathy.

When, in 1956, President Nasser's nationalisation of the Suez Canal resulted in the British, French and Israeli invasion of Egypt, the Mirror's overt hostility to the action was similar to its stance over Afghanistan and Iraq almost half a century later. Readers deserted it in droves over Suez - and returned in ever-increasing droves as soon as the desert dust had settled.

This time, sadly, it could be different. In New York on the day the notorious pictures of Iraqi prisoners being abused and tortured were declared bogus, I met with a number of senior editors, some of them British. All agreed that, despite the Mirror's commendable perseverance in revealing the appalling behaviour of a minority of British troops in Iraq, the ugly potential of the fake pictures - that British soldiers could now be at even greater risk - would determine an exodus of readers that would prove difficult to reverse.

Early indications are that the Mirror's sales nosedived the following morning. "Sorry... we were hoaxed" and the editor's head on a platter alongside the humble pie may not be enough to restore a credibility already damaged by an anti-war campaign that, as Morgan admitted, went on too long and was often pursued too stridently.

In the short space of time between the game being up for whoever manufactured the pictures and Piers being shown the door, one of those New York editors had a further thought. It would, he believed, be a mistake to remove the editor, mainly because he may prove difficult to replace. Morgan might all too often resemble an accident waiting to happen, but he had earned the goodwill of his staff, the respect of many rivals and the reputation of honestly facing up to problems (many of which, it must be said, his impetuosity created). The Mirror's only chance of regaining public trust was to allow Morgan himself to sweep up the pieces and attempt to glue them back together.

It is certainly true that finding a new editor with Morgan's passion, flair and uncompromising audacity will not be easy. Moreover, although he is one of only two Daily Mirror editors never to have worked previously for the group in any capacity - the other was Hamilton Fyfe a century ago - he overcame early insecurity born of unfamiliarity to subscribe to and update many of the paper's traditions.

(A right-wing editor from the News of the World, who'd been at The Sun, was hardly an obvious choice as editor of the Daily Mirror, he observed to me last year. What's more, he didn't understand it or its readers when he arrived - but now "I believe passionately in the Mirror".)

If there is already within Trinity Mirror an outstanding candidate to become the 19th editor of the daily paper, his or her light is very much hidden from this side of the bushel. Phil Hall, a former News of the World editor now running the Mirror Group magazine unit, was previously an executive at The People, the group title with the least of the Mirror ethos. Tina Weaver, a former deputy to Morgan at the daily, also emerged at The People and as editor of the Sunday Mirror has struggled in the treacherous quicksands of the Sunday popular market. Des Kelly, the current deputy and acting editor, has a background dominated by sports journalism.

So if inside is out, Trinity Mirror must trawl the market for a preferably low-profile journalistic genius willing not only to tackle the toughest task in newspapers but do so within a company culture where the share price outranks the journalism and the bottom line is more important than the moral high ground. That the chief executive, Sly Bailey, apparently demanded Morgan's resignation after watching a press conference by the hardly unsullied Queen's Lancashire Regiment and then coming under pressure from institutional shareholders with even less feeling for the industry than her own, is one of the least estimable aspects of the entire affair.

When we spoke last year, Morgan prophetically told me: "When we were winning all those awards and when we were all geniuses, I said to the staff, 'trust me, I know how this business works - in a year's time we'll all be halfwits again'." Unless the management gets it right this crucial and possibly last time, the real halfwits won't be those who are still working loyally on the editorial floor.

Bill Hagerty is a former 'Daily Mirror' deputy editor. His centenary history of the paper, 'Read All About It!', was published last year