Piers Morgan had an eventful night during Wednesday’s instalment of his TalkTV show, with not one but two guests walking off in the middle of their interviews.
First of all, Alistair Campbell brought his appearance on Piers Morgan Uncensored to an abrupt halt, after growing frustrated with the direction a debate was heading in.
During the live show, the former political adviser was invited to take part in a discussion about the latest Tory party drama with The Spectator’s Douglas Murray.
However, as the segment descended into personal digs and both guests – and the host – talking over one another, Campbell decided he’d had enough.
“Piers if you’re going to bring me on to talk with these right-wing non-entities, who are part of the problem in this country anyway…” he began.
“People like Murray and The Spectator, where Johnson was spawned, they are part of the problem. They created this beast. They created this man who has got no morality, no honesty, no objectivity, no openness.”
Alistair concluded: “Piers I’ve got to tell you, I thought I was coming on to talk to you because you’re quite a serious person.
“I’ve got Sherwood on pause downstairs, take Douglas Murray, take him down and put his 55 Tufton Street bin, and I’ll see you later. All the best.”
Watch it all unfold in the clip below...
But the drama certainly didn’t end there.
At the end of the show, the show’s political editor Kate McCann was due to interview MP James Duddridge, one of the members of Johnson’s government who had remained loyal to the PM.
When Kate told the MP she had a question from Piers, he told her: “I’m happy to answer questions from you, my wife would divorce me if I took questions from Piers Morgan. I refuse to go on with him, because it’s terrible. What question have you got for me?”
Speaking to his colleague, Piers then urged her to ask if he “thinks he’s now Britain’s Comical Ali”, apparently not realising that Duddridge also had his voice in his earpiece.
“Sorry, I’ve got Piers in the earpiece,” Duddridge pointed out. “The only person that’s comical here is him. I love Kate, I will answer Kate, but I’m not going to answer to you, I think it’s very, very bad TV, I don’t mean to be disrespectful.”
True to form, the divisive presenter then fired back: “Let me tell you what I think of you, you impertinent little twerp. I think you’re very bad TV. You’re the Comical Ali of British politics, everyone’s laughing at you.”
As Duddridge brought the interview to an end, Piers retorted: “I suggest you take your little mic off and pop off back inside. Rude little man. Off you go.”
Watch the clip below...
At the end of the show, Piers remarked: “It’s been an extraordinary night.
“We’ve had people who’ve had to lose their jobs for watching porn in parliament taking the high moral ground, we’ve had Alistair Campbell ripping his mic off and storming out because someone had the affrontery to call him out, god forbid, and we’ve had some MP I’ve never heard of tell me his wife hates me… and he’s not going to talk to us anymore either.”
“But I don’t care,” he added. “Because you’re not going to be in a job by next week! And I am! So that’s that!”
Piers, of course, knows a thing or two about walk-offs, having stormed off the set of Good Morning Britain on his final day as host last year, when he was called out for his remarks about Meghan Markle by colleague Alex Beresford.
A year after his GMB exit, Piers Morgan Uncensored debuted in April with a much-publicised interview with former US president Donald Trump.
In the weeks following its launch, reports claimed that viewing figures for Piers’ show have taken a nosedive, with other programmes on Talk TV reportedly recording no audience at all at some points.
Amid reports of struggling ratings at Talk TV, Piers previously tweeted: “Linear TV [is] increasingly irrelevant [compared] to total eyeball potential for a global show like this, especially with younger viewers who don’t really watch TV any more.”
Piers Morgan Uncensored airs Monday to Thursday at 8pm on TalkTV.