Will Piers Morgan make Earl Spencer pulp his own book?

Jon Sopel (0:02)

This is a global production.

Lorraine Kelly (0:05)

What about the allegations from Piers Morgan? He's going to pursue legal action because there were some inaccuracies. Will you apologize for it? And it's going to be changed?

Earl Spencer (0:17)

Absolutely. I mean, unlike some journalists who we know of, I'm very happy to acknowledge I made a small error, and I've apologized, and it will be put right in the second edition.

Emily Maitlis (0:30)

Earl Spencer's apologized for the error he made over Piers Morgan. But is he actually going to have to pulp his entire first edition of that book?

Jon Sopel (0:40)

Yeah, Charles Spencer has said it was a small error. Will that be enough to satisfy Piers Morgan? We're going to ask him. Welcome to The News Agents.

It's Jon.

Emily Maitlis (0:59)

It's Maitlis. And the first indication that we had that Piers Morgan was unhappy with Earl Spencer's new book about Diana, Swan Song, was when he went on his own show, as he is wont to do, and essentially did a long-ish rant to camera. Now, if you Google Piers Morgan long-ish rant to camera, you will come up with quite a few. But this one really hit home, because this was the moment that he unearthed what he called a defamatory couple of pages in the book, where Earl Spencer had not just name called, not just described a phone call with Piers as being a bit techy.

It was where he'd literally got the dates wrong of Piers' tenure at the head of the Mirror newspaper. And that was something that Piers Morgan was just unlikely, could not resist pointing out to Earl Spencer in very strong legal terms.

Jon Sopel (2:10)

And so what we have at the moment is Piers Morgan with a very straight face, but hiding a very big smile, making the prosecution case against this book and calling for it to be pulped, for all the books that are in the bookshops now in Britain and around the world to be taken off and to be turned into mash. Pulp fiction. Yeah, Pulp Fiction as the Sun headline had it very cleverly this morning. And Piers Morgan, I mean, you said it was a rant. I actually listened to that whole, I thought he was very calm and the way he led up to it and he quoted extensively from the book and then just said essentially, it's all bullshit. I wasn't the editor at the time. You have got this factually wrong. You have libeled me.

What the hell are you going to do about it?

Emily Maitlis (3:02)

Yeah, I mean, as an author, what a heart sinking moment to get that first call from your publishers. I don't know if you've seen this, you know, the little clip that pops up in your WhatsApp. I'm not sure if you've seen this. I think we better have a conversation because everyone gets things wrong. I think that's fair to say. And everyone can normally apologize for the things they've got wrong or correct the things they've got wrong. If it's a date or a name or a place or whatever. But Piers Morgan made the point there that it felt quite vindictive in its description of him, having lost a major legal case against Diana because of an invasion of her privacy. And it's true that the Mirror Group did have to pay out about a million pounds at that time for showing pictures of Diana in her gym kit and her leotard. And Piers Morgan was made to be the villain at the centre. And all he had to do was turn round and go, there was a villain, but it wasn't me. Interestingly, he doesn't name check the former register. So he's not actually trying to get anyone else into trouble here. He's just pointing out that he was literally the rival newspaper at The Sun at that time, about as far away from The Mirror as he could be.

And why this is becoming quite an interesting story, I guess, is A, because, you know, the Royals, King Charles, the allegations that have been made in the last week are now right back at the forefront of many people's minds.

And we probably won't forget that description, explosive description that Spencer made about the king, about how happy, how gleeful he was about Diana's death. And I think Piers Morgan recognized that this was, if you like, his in. To not only call out the inconsistencies and the errors about Piers Morgan, but to raise the idea in many people's minds that actually maybe the whole book was bullshit, maybe the whole thing was fabricated, maybe this man who has written history books who calls himself a historian, cannot be trusted as a first person historian on his own life.