Back in the long forgotten days of 2011, some genius walked into the offices of CNN – one of the world’s biggest cable news networks – where they were searching for a replacement to legendary primetime interviewer, Larry King. When asked who they’d put forward for that prestigious role, this person replied, presumably, without a hint of irony: Piers Morgan. It wasn’t a practical joke. It wasn’t the consequence of a lost bet. It was the end result of a long hunt to fill one of current affairs programming’s biggest slots. The answer: Piers Morgan, a man who, as editor of the Daily Mirror, presided over the Golden Age of Phone Hacking, before rebranding as a jowly Simon Cowell on both Britain’s and America’s Got Talent.
Anyhow, it’s worth remembering all that as Morgan returns to British screens as the host of Piers Morgan Uncensored. He opens his first show – an interview with former US president Donald Trump – with a bastardised quote from Nelson Mandela. “As Mandela might’ve said,” he tells viewers, “it’s been a long walk to freedom of speech.” Well Piers, as Dorothy “might’ve said”, we’re not on CNN anymore, Toto. This is the launch night for TalkTV, a cheap-looking spin-off of Rupert Murdoch’s TalkRadio (beloved of cabbies and insomniacs), which can be found on the freeview box at your grandmother’s house (or YouTube).
