Piers Morgan may have lavished praised on Vanessa Feltz when she joined him on TalkTV, but he has not always been so complementary.
He once branded the channel’s new presenter 'hopeless' before he fired her when he was Daily Mirror editor.
After Feltz jumped ship from the BBC to join TalkTV two weeks ago, Morgan gushed about building a “great team of such talented and experienced broadcasters as Vanessa Feltz” .
He said: “Rather like my football team Arsenal, the squad’s getting stronger and the future’s looking exciting.”
But writing in his memoir The Insider, Morgan recalled how one of the first things he did as editor of the Mirror was to axe her as a columnist.
He said: “I had a little rant in morning conference about what I love and loathe in the paper, singling out the weekly offerings from Vanessa Feltz for special attention, saying: ‘She is absolutely f*****g hopeless. Who cares what she has to say about anything?
“We’re not running that column again.”
Morgan claimed “everyone nodded in agreement” before walking outside to find a bunch of flowers from Feltz, congratulating him on his new role.
He wrote: “I rang her agent to say thanks for the flowers, and to fire her client.”
Morgan also made a crude joke about the TV star’s weight in the book, published in 2005. Describing a moment when the judge in the Naomi Campbell privacy High Court case tried to find some documents for the model, he wrote: “Justice was off his chair faster than Vanessa Feltz with a Big Mac voucher.”
Morgan’s previous rants about his new colleague’s journalistic credentials could prove embarrassing for TalkTV bosses who have positioned her at the centre off their new autumn schedule.
Feltz is on Drive Time from 4pm-7pm during the week, where she is billed with “unpacking the biggest stories of the day from politics to showbiz”.
She said she was thrilled to be joining the stable of TalkTV presenters, which also includes Jeremy Kyle and Sharon Osbourne. Feltz added: “What a smorgasbord of delicious TalkTV talent. I can’t wait to be part of this team of Titans effervescing across multimedia.”
Feltz hosted a Breakfast show on Radio 2 from 2011 to 2022 and fronted slots on BBC Radio London for two decades before leaving to join TalkTV.
She said at the time the “allure of a retirement reclining on a chaise longue” being fed grapes by fiance Ben Ofoedu was “fleeting”.
But she added: “While there are politicians to be tackled, fat cats to be flattened, scams to expose and listeners to champion it’s my mission to breathe fire into the microphone.
“I am effervescent with joy at the invitation to unleash my hitherto hidden side on Talk TV.”
