BREAKING NEWS: Savage moment Piers Morgan tears apart Earl Spencer’s ‘lie’ live on air
The outspoken broadcaster dismissed claims made about him in the new book from Princess Diana’s brother.
Piers Morgan spoke to ITV’s Chris Ship about Earl Spencer’s allegations against him (Image: ITV)
Broadcaster Piers Morgan has slammed Earl Spencer in an interview with ITV after the brother of the late Princess Diana made allegations against him in his new book Swan Song: My Sister Diana. Speaking to the channel’s Royal Editor Chris Ship, he vehemently denied Spencer’s claims that he had been at the helm of the Mirror when it published intrusive “peeping Tom” photographs of Princess Diana in the gym in 1993.
“This is a book that Earl Spencer has done a lot of publicity on, and in those interviews, he said quite clearly he is recording history. He’s a historian. [He] wants us to believe every word of his book, and in particular the incendiary claims he’s made about phone calls and things that King Charles is reputed to have said. But my belief, based on what he’s written about me, which has turned out to be completely untrue, is that he’s about as far removed from a historian as you could possibly be…when he can’t even get a basic story right involving me within a two-year range? It’s preposterous,” he fumed.
Piers Morgan has spoken out about accusations made against him by Princess Diana’s brother (Image: PA)
Referring directly to the photos, he explained: “It’s the most easily provable inaccuracy imaginable, because it wasn’t exactly a trade secret in UK media when I joined the Daily Mirror.
“I came from the News of the World…at the end of 1995, two years after the Diana gym pictures furore, which ended up with the Mirror at the time paying her a million pounds. So that happened, but it had nothing to do with me,” he insisted.
He subsequently claimed this glaring error also cast doubt on every other allegation in the tome, saying the 62-year-old aristocrat is “not to be believed”.
“What else can we trust in terms of the claims in the book?” he asked. “There’s also his apology to me today, in which he admits that he got it completely wrong. In my view, it’s defamatorily wrong, and we’ll be taking legal action against him and his publishers to have this removed from the book, and therefore probably have the book removed because he’s admitted that it’s completely inaccurate,” Morgan stated.
Pointing to what he claims is a further error in the tome, he said: “He claims when he phoned a few tabloid editors after Princess Diana’s death to uninvite us from her funeral after we’d been invited by the Lord Chamberlain’s office, he says I was surly and annoyed in this conversation…
“This goes to the heart of the veracity of his recollection of phone calls in that week, which is the week when he claims, of course, to have had the conversation with then Prince Charles, which was so incendiary, about him being ‘giddy like a lottery winner’.
“It’s an absolute lie to say that I was surly. I could not have been more respectful. In fact, it’s not just a case of you having to take my word for it. Go back and read my own best-selling volume of diaries, The Insider, and check the diary entry about this phone call, and you will see how respectful I was to him and to his family, and asking him to pass on my specific condolences to his mother, whom I spoke to on a regular basis, as I did his sister, Princess Diana.
“So he’s lied about the tone of our conversation, and he knows he has, and that to me begs the question: Well, if he’s got that so egregiously wrong, then is he to be believed about his recollection of the tone of the conversations he had with then Prince Charles? I would argue he’s not,” he concluded.
