Piers Morgan told the ‘Good Morning Britain’ bosses he’d "rather shoot himself" than host the breakfast show.
The 52-year-old presenter may take credit for the success of the TV show seeing as it now regularly peaks with one million viewers, but he has admitted he almost didn’t take the job when he was asked to fill in for a brief week in 2015 because it "never appealed" to him and he was concerned the early morning starts would be "brutal."
He explained: "I never appealed to me. I thought the hours would be completely brutal. And they are. Helen Warner, who was running daytime rang and said: ‘Would you consider a week?’ I said: ‘I’d rather shoot myself,’ which would have been ironic, given my gun stance. But then I thought about it, said: ‘What could go wrong for a week?’
"Within an hour, we had to issue a first apology for my behaviour, which led to an Ofcom ruling. We had a French guy … and he kept saying something that sounded like the F word, only we thought it was a French word – but it wasn’t. And I kept laughing. Susanna Reid [his co-host] thought I was absolutely horrific. This beast comes in, cracking terrible jokes… She was very much queen bee on breakfast TV for a long time, I was very alpha male and you’re putting an alpha male and a queen bee near each other… Let the entertainment begin."
Piers’ week of filling in turned into a three-day-a-week commitment and, although he gets paid "what he’s worth", he doesn’t know whether he gets more than his co-host Susanna – but he thinks she would agree he deserves it.
Speaking to ES magazine, he said: "I have no idea what she’s paid. I don’t think it would matter to her, even if she found out that I was being paid more, because she, I think, would be the first to accept that I’ve slightly redone the wheel here. I bring a completely different kind of feel. I think she’s brilliant, worth every penny ITV gives her…"
Piers Morgan almost turned down Good Morning Britain
