Yesterday’s news was all about the former journalist Piers Morgan calling Meghan Markle a liar for saying she’d had suicidal thoughts. It wasn’t the most important news in our household – that was the arrival of a dozen bottles of Australian red wine – but surfing through cyberspace, there was little else going on. If you were to believe large sections of the media, there still isn’t.
I finally got around to seeing, more by accident than design, the incident where Morgan flounced off the GMB set after the show’s weatherman – I am not making this up – mounted a sturdy defence of Ms Markle. My main feeling was of embarrassment. I am not quite sure why the weatherman, one Alex Beresford, went off on one, given his purpose on the show to is to tell us whether or not it’s going to piss down with rain, but I haven’t watched breakfast TV since Frank Bough sleazed up to his fellow presenter Selina Scott, sometime in the last century, so I may be out of touch with the genre.
I felt myself almost nodding in agreement with Mr Beresford, even though I had no idea who he was. He had an opinion and he gave it. As to whether it was worthy of being given a national TV audience is another thing.
Anyway, apparently Sharon Osbourne, who is the ultimate modern day celebrity having become famous for being Ozzie Osbourne’s wife, has kicked up a storm by defending Morgan’s right to be a racist, something she later apologised for in case she lost a few twitter followers and a judge’s job on a TV talent show. “I’m very sorry,” she nearly said. “Some of my best friends are black and I would never dream of wishing to upset them, even if they actually existed.”
So a TV interview featuring a British Prince and an American actor has become the biggest news in the whole world, except for those parts which didn’t, which is virtually everywhere. In truth, it’s a celebrity shit show. The whole thing is being played out not for the Great British Public, but for the media luvvies who seem to think it is.
Am I interested in what Piers Morgan, Alex Beresford and Sharon Osbourne think of Harry and Meghan? Not in the least. Am I interested in what Harry and Meghan had to say on a TV show? Ditto. I like the latter more than the former but, as with the vast majority of my fellow Brits, something like 83% of us, I didn’t watch the controversial Oprah Winfrey show.
This is the world of Hello!, the Daily Mail and every other media outlet that assumes all we want to hear about is celebrity tat. The telly weatherman is still the telly weatherman. Sharon Osbourne is still the wife of the bloke who sang Paranoid. Piers Morgan is still a wanker. It’s just noise, isn’t it?
