Piers Morgan found himself put in his place thanks to Emily Maitlis during her appearance on Tuesday’s Good Morning Britain.
The Newsnight presenter slipped a cheeky dig at the GMB host’s kudos as a news anchor as they discussed the ongoing BBC equal pay row on the ITV breakfast show.
Speaking about Samira Ahmed taking the BBC to tribunal over claims she faces a “600% pay gap” compared to fellow presenter Jeremy Vine, Emily remarked that the case had “thrown up the difference between news and entertainment”.
“You’re an entertainer, Piers. We do news,” she said, turning to his co-host, former BBC Breakfast presenter Susanna Reid.
Piers retorted: “Are you looking at her when you said that? The cheek of it! You can be a bit theatrical yourself, love.”
Susanna agreed with Emily, joking: “He’s just the bit of fluff and nonsense correspondent.”
As the conversation returned to more serious issues, Emily said it would be “nice to have [news and entertainment] recognised equally” in terms of pay.
This led to Piers dishing out a rare compliment to one of his long-term Twitter adversaries, Gary Lineker, who is the BBC’s highest-paid star with a salary of between £1,750,000 and £1,754,999 per year.
Piers said: “I don’t know about that. I think the star power has to play a factor. Even at the BBC. Particularly even at the BBC.
“Gary Lineker always cops it as well and yet he’s probably the best at what he does out there and could command a lot more money if he came to ITV.”
Samira Ahmed case focuses on the pay she receives for her work on the BBC News channel programme Newswatch, which she has presented since 2012.
She has asked why she was paid £465 per episode of Newswatch – an audience-led critique of coverage by BBC News – while Jeremy Vine was paid up to £3,000 for each episode of Points Of View, work she described as comparable.
The BBC disagrees and says the two programmes are different.
The case went to an employment tribunal on Monday and is set to continue.
Good Morning Britain airs weekdays at 6am on ITV.