Uncensored - Piers Morgan - 20220518_piers-morgan-uncensored-cost-of-living-crisis
Aired: 2022-05-18
Duration: 45:20


=== Bank of England Crisis (03:33) ===

[00:00:20]  Good evening on Piers Morgan, uncensored.
[00:00:22]  Tonight, should straight actors be allowed to play gay characters?
[00:00:25]  Hollywood star Rupert Everett is here live.
[00:00:28]  Should the royal family stop apologising for Britain's past?
[00:00:32]  And should Boris Johnson survive as Prime Minister?
[00:00:34]  We'll debate all of that in a moment, but first, my brain done.
[00:00:41]  There's no need to exaggerate the current cost of living crisis.
[00:00:44]  It's scary enough as it is.
[00:00:46]  Just ask any family losing sleep over how to pay their bills or stunned into open-mouth silence at the supermarket checkout.
[00:00:52]  The cost of food, fuel and essential household products is rocketing around the world.
[00:00:57]  Prices are rising by 9% in the UK alone.
[00:01:00]  The last time inflation was so high was in 1982.
[00:01:04]  So this is the worst financial situation we've faced in 40 years and a desperately worrying time for millions of people.
[00:01:10]  When there's economic meltdown like this, we expect those whose job it is to fix it to offer us three things.
[00:01:16]  Solutions, common sense and calm.
[00:01:19]  Instead, the governor of the Bank of England, the most important financier in Britain, is running around like a hysterically hyperbolic headless chicken.
[00:01:27]  The one that I am going to sound, I guess, rather apocalyptic about is food.
[00:01:33]  Sorry for being apocalyptic for a moment, but that's a major concern.
[00:01:37]  Have you felt a bit helpless through this period?
[00:01:41]  Well, yes, I mean, it is very, very, I mean, more than uncomfortable.
[00:01:45]  I'm trying to think of a word that's even more severe than that.
[00:01:48]  Helpless?
[00:01:49]  Helpless?
[00:01:51]  Andrew Bailey, you're the governor of the Bank of England.
[00:01:54]  It's literally your job to help us, not be helpless.
[00:01:58]  And if the apocalypse is truly upon us, then nothing you do or say matters.
[00:02:09]  That governor is the apocalypse.
[00:02:12]  Literally the end of the world.
[00:02:13]  We'd all be dead.
[00:02:15]  Now, you might think that Bailey and his team are working around the clock in their offices to rescue us, but you would be wrong.
[00:02:20]  We learned today that Bailey is allowing his staff to work from home four days a week.
[00:02:24]  Presumably they're all sheltering in their private home bunkers from the impending Armageddon.
[00:02:29]  Bailey also says everybody else should think and reflect before asking for a pay rise, which is pretty rich coming from him when his salary is £575,000 a year.
[00:02:39]  And when he's managing the economy with all his staff sitting at home on the sofa in their briefs on Zoom.
[00:02:45]  Meanwhile, the former chief economist of the Bank of England says maths should be rebranded because it's frightening.
[00:02:52]  Andy Haldane told the Times it should be called numeracy, which he says is less scary.
[00:02:59]  What is he talking about?
[00:03:01]  Perhaps he took his numeracy lessons like this.
[00:03:05]  We had three bats and one more, Sasha, makes one, two, three, four all together.
[00:03:14]  Four beautiful butts.
[00:03:16]  I mean four beautiful bats.
[00:03:18]  That was Count Dracula, get it?
[00:03:21]  Terrifying, huh?
[00:03:22]  But the last thing we need in all seriousness right now is a ridiculous debate about whether poor little snowflakes can handle the word mass without going into spontaneous anaphylactic shock.
[00:03:32]  The only thing that's really frightening about the numbers right now, and you haven't got to be Einstein to work this out, is rocketing inflation.
[00:03:40]  The governor and his stay-at-home staff should get serious about a serious situation.
[00:03:44]  Stop waving the white flag of surrender.
[00:03:46]  Stop using woefully irresponsible language and get the hell back to the office.

=== Royal Apology Tour (02:37) ===

[00:03:53]  The British monarchy undoubtedly has a lot to answer for if you consider the grand sweep of history.
[00:03:58]  King Henry VIII had what's now known as a highly problematic relationship with women, especially when they were in close proximity to a guillotine.
[00:04:06]  His daughter Queen Mary was a big fan of burning Protestants in front of large crowds, which is all now frowned upon.
[00:04:12]  And don't even get me styled King George III, without whose madness and incompetence I would almost certainly be addressing you now as the King of the United States of America.
[00:04:21]  The truth is that Britain's had kings and queens for about 1200 years.
[00:04:25]  And as with US presidents, some have been dumb, mean, malevolent, or useless.
[00:04:29]  Others, including the current Queen, have been magnificent.
[00:04:32]  Similarly, the British Empire was responsible for very good things and some very bad things.
[00:04:38]  But they all happened in the past, a long time ago.
[00:04:40]  Different rules, different rulers, a different age.
[00:04:43]  That's how history tends to work.
[00:04:45]  None of it has got anything to do with today's royal family.
[00:04:48]  But today, sadly, every royal tour is now dominated by a shrieking chorus of demands from social justice stirrers for them to issue endless apologies for the past.
[00:04:59]  The latest target is Prince Charles is visiting Canada to mark the Queen's platinum jubilee.
[00:05:05]  We must find new ways to come to terms with the darker and more difficult aspects of the past.
[00:05:13]  Acknowledging, reconciling, and striving to do better.
[00:05:19]  It is a process that starts with listening.
[00:05:23]  It is, but once you start apologising, Your Royal Highness, trust me on this, it'll never stop.
[00:05:29]  The Royals face demands from rights groups in Canada to formally apologise for the way Indigenous people were treated during the Age of Empire.
[00:05:36]  This, after the Earl and Countess of Wessex faced protests over Britain's historic links to slavery on a visit to the Grenadines.
[00:05:42]  And the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge were met with demands for reparations in Jamaica.
[00:05:47]  Now look, it's beyond question that the British Empire committed atrocities by the enlightened standards of today's world.
[00:05:53]  Just as it is beyond question that there are many things we can be ashamed of in our past.
[00:05:59]  But there are also many reasons why we should be extremely proud to be British.
[00:06:02]  We're a great country that's done many great things.
[00:06:05]  Yet all of the good stuff is being forgotten as the royals embark on what now seems to be an endless grovelling apology tour for the behaviour of ancestors.
[00:06:15]  Well, I've got an apology and it's this.
[00:06:17]  I'm sorry, but I'm finding these constant apologies by the royals increasingly irksome.
[00:06:26]  Obesity has reached epidemic proportions globally with at least 2.8 million people dying because of it each year.

=== Gay Actors Debate (15:48) ===

[00:06:31]  More than half of young American adults are either overweight or obese.
[00:06:35]  In England and Scotland, obesity is now a bigger cause of deaths than smoking.
[00:06:39]  But rather than tackle this problem head-on with the action that's urgently required, woke warriors want health professionals to ease off on the global fat fight because, you guessed it, it's racist.
[00:06:50]  The University of Illinois Chicago School of Public Health says weight stigma is discrimination or stereotyping based on a person's weight and is one of the last types of discrimination still condoned and carried out by public health and medical experts.
[00:07:03]  This report says focus on body size is rooted in racism dating back to Charles Darwin and the stigmatising words like obesity should be dropped for terms like people in larger bodies.
[00:07:15]  For the love of God, the people being lectured about all this are doctors, highly educated medical professionals.
[00:07:23]  They should be allowed to get on with their jobs without worrying about upsetting people who need to lose weight.
[00:07:28]  And by the way, here's a pro tip.
[00:07:29]  If you do want to lose weight, and take it from me, someone who's carrying a bit of excess timber, the way to do it is to do a bit more exercise and stick to a little less food and alcohol down your gullet.
[00:07:40]  That normally tends to work.
[00:07:41]  The idea is now deemed racist to criticise morbid obesity is yet another symptom of the woke virus' grip on common sense.
[00:07:50]  We now know that higher mortality rates from COVID-19 in the black community were linked to obesity.
[00:07:56]  When we tell the medics who are mobilized in the fight on fat to stand down because it's racist, we're actually putting our minority communities at greater risk of poor health and death.
[00:08:06]  And that, ironically, is racism.
[00:08:11]  Professional footballers are among the most lavishly paid athletes in the world.
[00:08:15]  Top players can earn millions every month by kicking a ball around, which obviously sounds ridiculous in an economic crisis, but their salaries are driven by market force.
[00:08:23]  They get paid a lot of money because they're the best at what they do and they make a lot of money for their teams.
[00:08:28]  And the same simple economic calculation should apply to men and women.
[00:08:32]  That's why I'm in total agreement today with the groundbreaking decision by the US Soccer Federation, not with their decision to call themselves Soccer Federation, it's football, but their decision to pay its women team the same amount it pays the men.
[00:08:46]  US women have fought hard for equal pay for years and here's their victorious captain today.
[00:08:53]  I am feeling extreme pride and to be able to say finally equal pay for equal work feels very, very good.
[00:09:00]  Well she should.
[00:09:01]  She's earned it.
[00:09:02]  They all have.
[00:09:02]  The US women's football team is a ruthless winning machine, skilled, strong, resilient champions.
[00:09:10]  They've won four World Cups, four Olympic goals.
[00:09:12]  Compare that with the US men's team, which has won absolutely nothing and is about as entertaining to watch as a Meghan Markle podcast.
[00:09:19]  It's not realistic right now for all female sports teams or individual sports women to earn the same as male counterparts.
[00:09:26]  It depends on the sport, the level of success, their star power, and particularly on revenue streams from crowds and television.
[00:09:32]  But in this case, it's a no-brainer.
[00:09:35]  The US women's team may be very smug and annoying.
[00:09:41]  But honestly, they've got every right to be.
[00:09:44]  They're more successful than the US men's team by far.
[00:09:47]  They get bigger crowds, just as many sponsors, and actually much bigger stars.
[00:09:52]  If anything, they should be paid more than the men.
[00:09:58]  Well, how long until Britain's cost of living crisis becomes a Tory leadership crisis?
[00:10:04]  Inflation's running at the highest rate for 40 years, viciously squeezing living standards.
[00:10:08]  And at the same time, revelation after revelation continue about Downing Street's illicit parties ignoring their own COVID rules, with the inevitably damning Sue Gray Party Gate report still to come.
[00:10:19]  I just got to wonder, how much longer can Boris Johnson actually survive?
[00:10:23]  Well, Danny Finkelstein, the Conservative peer and political columnist for Times Newspaper George, been out.
[00:10:28]  Danny, great to have you.
[00:10:29]  Thank you for coming to the studio.
[00:10:31]  Every time I think that's it for Boris Johnson, he somehow wriggles off the hook.
[00:10:38]  But I have felt for a while that this double whammy of party gate drip, drip, drip leading to this Sue Gray report, which we understand will be pretty damning, coupled with surging inflation, ought to be, I would think, a tipping point to potentially the end for him.
[00:10:56]  It's very difficult for him.
[00:10:57]  Let's look at it in the medium term.
[00:10:58]  He's got to fight a general election.
[00:11:00]  You don't win general elections if you're behind on the economy and you're behind on leadership.
[00:11:04]  And when you've also been in power for a long time, that is very challenging for them to win the next general election.
[00:11:10]  So one of the things, obviously, that you can consider doing if you're a political party is trying to shift your leadership approval ratings by changing your leader.
[00:11:18]  The problem is getting from here to there.
[00:11:21]  Political leaders have a lot of support in their parties that prevents them from being removed.
[00:11:27]  They have a sort of loyalty that isn't actually loyalty to them.
[00:11:30]  It's loyalty to the person themselves.
[00:11:32]  People who are in office feel, you know, I'll stay in office if Boris Johnson stays in office.
[00:11:38]  Why would I rock the boat?
[00:11:39]  If I'm the person that rocks the boat, will it really be me that's the beneficiary, right?
[00:11:44]  So there's what you might think of as a market failure in political coups.
[00:11:48]  Should he have survived party gay anyway?
[00:11:52]  Moment he admitted that he'd been to some of these parties and that he'd done wrong.
[00:11:57]  Should any prime minister, once they'd been fined by the police, actually survive that moment?
[00:12:02]  No, not in my opinion, and actually it goes before that.
[00:12:04]  I i'm not in favour of the police having intervened actually, but I am in favour of making the judgment that he shouldn't survive.
[00:12:11]  You can't set rules on something that the government claimed and I think they were right, I think you agree with this as well was a matter of life and death yeah, and then feel they shouldn't keep those rules.
[00:12:21]  So I think, if you don't think the prime minister should resign as a result of that, you're crossing a line.
[00:12:28]  And even if you believe that the issue itself hasn't got proportion, the principle does, which is that prime ministers who are lawmakers shouldn't be law breakers.
[00:12:38]  But that's a different question than the other question.
[00:12:40]  The question, should he leave, is a different question for will he?
[00:12:44]  And that's where it gets a bit more complex with Boris Johnson, because take the pandemic, for example.
[00:12:48]  I would argue that the first half of it, he was pretty disastrous.
[00:12:52]  His failure to deal with things properly, quickly enough, I felt, led to a lot of unnecessary deaths, care homes, PPE testing, the border control, the rest of it.
[00:13:02]  But there's no doubt that he made the right call about vaccines, brought in the right people, and they bought the right number, and that helped us.
[00:13:10]  Also, no doubt that he stood back, I think, eventually and said, right, we have to open up and live with the virus.
[00:13:14]  And that has so far proven to be the right decision.
[00:13:17]  And again, right now with Party Gate, you also have Ukraine raging away, where many people consider Boris Johnson.
[00:13:24]  I would be one of them.
[00:13:24]  And I interviewed Vladimir Klitschko last night, who was very praiseworthy about Boris Johnson's leadership, where he's actually been quite statesmanlike and done what I would want him to do as Prime Minister.
[00:13:35]  So he's a contradictory character, Boris.
[00:13:38]  My father was born in Lvov and now Lviv.
[00:13:41]  So it matters a lot to me.
[00:13:43]  And he has shown clear principle.
[00:13:45]  But in other areas, particularly in domestic policy, really, the government seems a bit lost.
[00:13:50]  We've got a Chancellor of the Exchequer who has one fiscal policy, a Prime Minister that has a different fiscal policy.
[00:13:56]  They don't know whether they want, they say they want to cut taxes, but they're actually raising taxes.
[00:14:02]  So the government has a leadership which I don't think has got clarity and it doesn't have direction.
[00:14:10]  And that definitely will undermine him with consideration.
[00:14:13]  Can any government and any prime minister, and this might apply to Joe Biden as well, by the way, can any of them survive this kind of level of inflation?
[00:14:21]  Is it the ultimate death knell for any serving incumbent prime minister or president?
[00:14:27]  It certainly doesn't matter whether he's to blame for it or not.
[00:14:30]  What matters is the fact that people will feel bad about the cost of living and they'll feel bad about their incomes.
[00:14:36]  It's all about timing.
[00:14:37]  I mean, Churchill, who's Boris's great hero, he won a war, but so many people were left impoverished at the end of it, he got kicked out of office.
[00:14:45]  Absolutely.
[00:14:45]  And it's actually quite a good comparison because everyone said Clement Attlee was an incredibly boring individual and therefore couldn't possibly beat the colourful Churchill, but did.
[00:14:54]  Yes, is that Kier Starmer?
[00:14:56]  Well, that's possible.
[00:14:57]  If he, of course, himself survives to the next general election, having taken the risk that he has putting his career in the hands of Durham police force.
[00:15:06]  Look, you're one of the smartest political thinkers in the country.
[00:15:08]  If you're a betting man, is Boris Johnson still going to be there by Christmas?
[00:15:12]  I'd bet that he'd be there by Christmas.
[00:15:13]  I wouldn't bet that he'd win the general election.
[00:15:15]  Danny, great to see you.
[00:15:17]  Danny Finkelstein from The Times.
[00:15:19]  Well, on Censored Next, as Charles Camilla arrived in Canada for the Jubilee tour, should Britain pay reparations to atone for the colonial past?
[00:15:26]  And Hollywood superstar Rupert Everett will be here live discussing whether straight actors can or should play gay characters.
[00:15:32]  Rupert's actually on his way right now to the incensor studio.
[00:15:35]  There he is, the great man striding purposefully into the studio.
[00:15:49]  Talking about the Paz Book and I said, so when Dustin Hoffman stayed up for three days straight to appear tired for his role in Marathon Man, the great Lawrence Olivier famously retorted, my dear boy, have you tried acting?
[00:16:00]  I mean, that is the job of an actor, right?
[00:16:02]  But some think that gay roles, for example, should only be played by gay actors and disabled roles by disabled actors, trans roles by trans actors, and presumably by that logic, Nazi roles by Nazi actors.
[00:16:15]  Or is that ridiculous?
[00:16:16]  Is all of it ridiculous?
[00:16:17]  It's a peculiar kind of method acting zealotry and it's happening more and more often.
[00:16:23]  It would consider, for example, this sort of scene offensive.
[00:16:27]  You know what a woman said to me in the casino today?
[00:16:31]  She asked me if I was Liberace's son.
[00:16:35]  Really?
[00:16:40]  Come here.
[00:16:41]  No, Gurdo, you don't get anything.
[00:16:46]  Oh, yes, you get nothing like it.
[00:16:48]  That's Matt Damon and Michael Douglas, both obviously in Liberace, both acting.
[00:16:53]  Now, my next guest is a gay man who says his career suffered because Hollywood, that great liberal bastion of tolerance and fairness, couldn't grasp or tolerate or be fair about his ability to play it straight.
[00:17:04]  He's, of course, director-producer.
[00:17:06]  Movie superstar Rupert Everett.
[00:17:08]  Lovely to see it.
[00:17:09]  Lovely to see it.
[00:17:10]  When you watch, as a gay man, you watch that scene from Candelabra, the Liberace film.
[00:17:15]  To me, as a straight guy, it seemed very sensitively done, very realistic.
[00:17:20]  And more than that, for me, watching that film, I was very moved by the amount of work and detail that those two actors bothered to put into their research, the way they attacked the roles.
[00:17:33]  I was elated by it.
[00:17:36]  And there's many examples of fantastic straight actors playing great gay roles, and then there's some less good.
[00:17:45]  And I think the question is more, why can't gay actors play straight roles?
[00:17:51]  Right.
[00:17:51]  That's the thing that...
[00:17:52]  Because what happened to you was fascinating, because when you were deemed to be straight, you got all these romantic leads in Hollywood and everyone loved you, and you were the Hugh Grant of your...
[00:18:01]  If you don't mind the comparison, I would find that pretty repellent.
[00:18:03]  But anyway, no, I've said it.
[00:18:04]  It's out there.
[00:18:05]  You were the Hugh Grant of your day.
[00:18:07]  And then you came out and suddenly it was like, right, no more work for you, son.
[00:18:10]  We can't have you as a straight romantic lead.
[00:18:12]  I don't think it was actually quite like that, to be honest.
[00:18:15]  But the thing that was very frustrating when I had my kind of big Hollywood moment, which was playing a gay best friend and being gay, it was at that point very difficult to graduate.
[00:18:27]  I knew I had to try and graduate to playing something else apart from just that role.
[00:18:32]  And it felt that it was more or less impossible.
[00:18:35]  So my question is, I don't think gay actors should just play the gay roles.
[00:18:40]  I think the gay actors should be able to play the straight roles too.
[00:18:42]  I think some straight guys play great gay roles.
[00:18:45]  And it's not just about the gay roles and gay actors and so on.
[00:18:49]  I want to show some pictures here from other movies.
[00:18:52]  Tom Hanks, for example, in Philadelphia actually is an example of that.
[00:18:56]  But Tom Hanks in Philadelphia, to me, it was an incredibly powerful movie, which shone an unbelievably bright light on the issue of AIDS.
[00:19:05]  And what Tom Hanks did, I thought he played the role magnificently.
[00:19:09]  But more importantly, he brought tremendous numbers of eyeballs to watch it because he's Tom Hanks.
[00:19:14]  And it was a riskier period to do that as well.
[00:19:16]  I mean, when Michael Douglas and Matt Damon did the Candelabra movie, things have changed substantially.
[00:19:21]  Yes.
[00:19:21]  When he did that film, it wasn't really a subject that people...
[00:19:25]  But would a gay man have played that any more powerfully?
[00:19:28]  And was there a gay actor out at the time, for example, who would have got the box office success that Tom Hanks brought?
[00:19:35]  Well, and therefore the light that was shone on the issue.
[00:19:37]  This is the other question.
[00:19:38]  You know, people forget that Hollywood is a business.
[00:19:41]  So for example, when Scarlett Johansson was stopped from playing a trans role, There simply wasn't a trans actress at that point big enough to sustain a $50, $60 million movie.
[00:19:56]  I found that was a mistake of the trans community because there were probably lots of other trans roles in the film that would have been played by trans actresses.
[00:20:06]  And Scarlett Johansson wasn't going to be doing some portrait that was anti-trans.
[00:20:12]  So I felt it was slightly blinkered attitude.
[00:20:16]  Eddie Redmain had a similar thing with the Danish girl.
[00:20:19]  You know, he got into trouble for that from the trans community.
[00:20:22]  The question there is, he started the role as a boy.
[00:20:25]  So who's going to play the boy portrait?
[00:20:27]  Right.
[00:20:28]  The problem with that movie in the end is it was just dull.
[00:20:31]  Right, which is another crime altogether.
[00:20:34]  But Eddie Redmain also played Stephen Hawking, for example.
[00:20:37]  And that was an amazingly powerful performance.
[00:20:40]  That's role.
[00:20:40]  And again, shone a huge light on that particular affliction which Stephen Hawking had.
[00:20:47]  And I felt did it brilliantly.
[00:20:48]  Now, I don't know why it would need to be somebody who's got that condition that Stephen Hawking had, motor neuron disease or a variant of it, to be as effective or more effective than Eddie Redmain could be.
[00:21:00]  Well, I don't think it could have been because someone with that condition just wouldn't be able to be out there on the set from six in the morning until eight at night.
[00:21:09]  I just played a role of someone who'd had a very bad stroke.
[00:21:13]  It would be impossible for someone who had had a very bad stroke to really start working on it.
[00:21:18]  And that's the problem, isn't it?
[00:21:20]  Once you take the logic...
[00:21:21]  They wanted to.
[00:21:21]  Right, but if you take the logic to its logical end.
[00:21:24]  Well, you have to be a murderer to play a merch.
[00:21:26]  This is my point.
[00:21:26]  So here we've got Anthony Hopkins who played Hitler.
[00:21:30]  I mean, are we legitimately saying that if you're going to play Hitler now in a movie, you have to be a Nazi?
[00:21:36]  Similarly, the Sopranos.
[00:21:38]  The Sopranos, are we going to say now that they all had to be the senior sopranos, genuine members of the mob?
[00:21:45]  Right, but on the other side, Piers, you've got to remember, yes, of course, we shouldn't be making rules about this.
[00:21:51]  Yes, of course it's great for gay actors who've had quite a hard time, you know, historically, to be playing more roles, to be getting the gay.
[00:21:59]  It's quite frustrating.
[00:22:00]  I was frustrated.
[00:22:01]  I remember going to see Colin Firth in the film by Tom Ford, and he invited me to a screening.
[00:22:08]  I thought, well, thanks, Colin.
[00:22:09]  That's the end of my career.
[00:22:11]  Because, you know, that role really should have been mine.
[00:22:13]  Yeah, yeah, yeah.
[00:22:14]  And then, and so, you know, there's a frustration about that, of course.

=== Acting Should Mean It (13:25) ===

[00:22:19]  And there's also a point I do get, which is what some disabled actors have made the point to me, that there's not the opportunity at the grassroots level, you know, for them to get on the right ladder to get them into a position where they may get these big roles because they're not perceived to be big enough box office stars.
[00:22:38]  They find that the system is a bit oppressive to people.
[00:22:42]  And I get that.
[00:22:42]  I get the fact that maybe disabled actors do not get the same opportunities.
[00:22:46]  I get that too.
[00:22:47]  But I mean, the thing is, how is the business meant to change for that?
[00:22:52]  It's quite complicated.
[00:22:53]  No, it's really frustrating if you're a disabled actor.
[00:22:59]  But I don't think the answer to Richard III in Stratford-on-Avon, for example, which Greg, the outgoing head of the RSC, said that it can only now be played by disabled actors.
[00:23:13]  I just thought it was ridiculous to say that.
[00:23:14]  I think it would be lovely.
[00:23:15]  I'd love to see it played by a disabled actor, by the way, but I don't see why it's one of the great roles that actors want to play.
[00:23:23]  You know, acting is acting.
[00:23:24]  Movies and television and cinema are a particular army.
[00:23:28]  But isn't that the thing?
[00:23:29]  Ultimately, acting should mean what it says on the tin.
[00:23:33]  It's acting.
[00:23:33]  That you as an actor, one of the best in the business, you should be able to play any role, actually, right?
[00:23:38]  Because I look at things like the period drama Bridgerton, for example.
[00:23:43]  When you look at Bridgerton now, it's actually a fantasy in a way, in the sense that it has many black actors playing people that we know at the time were almost uniquely white feudal people, white lords and so on.
[00:23:56]  I don't mind that at all.
[00:23:57]  In the same way, I wouldn't mind if Idris Elbel was the next James Bond.
[00:24:01]  I would mind if they suddenly made James Bond a woman.
[00:24:03]  In other words, there's got to be a kind of common sense valve here.
[00:24:07]  You wouldn't mind or you would mind that.
[00:24:08]  I would mind if it was a woman.
[00:24:10]  It's like women should get their own spies, right?
[00:24:12]  So you can't turn James Bond, and I don't want him going non-binary or any other things.
[00:24:16]  None of that, none of that.
[00:24:18]  But I don't mind if it's a black actor playing Bond at all.
[00:24:22]  I would think that's fine.
[00:24:23]  Same way Bridgerton's.
[00:24:24]  And same way Doctor Who is now a black gay actor.
[00:24:26]  Right.
[00:24:27]  And I think that's very exciting.
[00:24:28]  I think that will give Doctor Who a whole new impetus.
[00:24:32]  But that's a different thing.
[00:24:33]  I don't think anyone really, as long as you're not a bigot, would have a problem with any of that.
[00:24:37]  Let me just, while I've got you, I'm curious about your view.
[00:24:40]  We've been talking a lot on the show about cancel culture.
[00:24:44]  This sort of rather insidious phenomenon which has raised its ugly head.
[00:24:48]  You've always been very outspoken.
[00:24:50]  You've always been pretty uncensored in all the time I've known you.
[00:24:54]  What do you feel about the society that we now operate in, these eggshells everyone feels they have to tread on?
[00:25:00]  I think it feels like the Stasi, to be honest.
[00:25:03]  I think it feels incredibly repressive.
[00:25:05]  I don't think it gets, it manages to achieve the aims that it's after.
[00:25:12]  For example, I don't know.
[00:25:16]  I've never met J.K. Rowling, for example, and I've never read her books.
[00:25:21]  But I'm willing to bet that before this all happened, she was not someone who was anti-transsexual.
[00:25:28]  No.
[00:25:29]  Not remotely.
[00:25:30]  She didn't know.
[00:25:30]  Everything you didn't know about her.
[00:25:31]  Nothing at all.
[00:25:32]  Nothing.
[00:25:33]  But now she might be.
[00:25:35]  She might easily be now.
[00:25:36]  Well, funny enough, I interviewed, it was a big scene up outside the Emmeline Pankhurst statue in Manchester, where you had women's rights campaigners.
[00:25:44]  We're going to have a little rally there.
[00:25:45]  And you had these trans activists turn up.
[00:25:47]  And I interviewed one of the trans activists who just was incredibly abusive on the show live, calling me all sorts of names and stuff.
[00:25:53]  And I don't have a transphobic bone in my body.
[00:25:56]  I want trans people to have equality and fairness.
[00:25:58]  But I also want to safeguard women's rights.
[00:26:01]  I don't think the two are incompatible.
[00:26:03]  No, but I think at a certain point now, it's reached a point where someone's got to start trying to make peace between these two groups.
[00:26:10]  And I think the thing we tend to forget is that in the kind of 24-hour history of humanity, these two million years, the women's movement only started literally three seconds ago in that whole thing.
[00:26:22]  So our brains are hardwired to something very anti-women too in a way.
[00:26:28]  So the trans movement has come right on the edge of the women's movement.
[00:26:32]  In fact, they're probably, when you look at it from further in advance, the same thing.
[00:26:36]  You're right, though.
[00:26:37]  We need to bring the extremities of these debates.
[00:26:41]  Because I don't believe people are trans.
[00:26:43]  These people, it's dangerous to call people TERFs when they're not because you make them into it.
[00:26:50]  J.K. Rowing to me is not transphobic.
[00:26:52]  She wants to safeguard women's rights and she should be applauded for doing so.
[00:26:56]  Rupert, we've run out of time.
[00:26:57]  Great to talk to you.
[00:26:58]  Thank you very much.
[00:26:58]  You're getting a tremendous shape, I might ask.
[00:27:00]  So are you?
[00:27:00]  Really good to see you.
[00:27:02]  Thank you.
[00:27:02]  Thank you for coming.
[00:27:03]  Thank you very much.
[00:27:04]  Good to see you.
[00:27:04]  I want to play Rupert Everett in a movie.
[00:27:06]  Actually, I want you to play me in a movie.
[00:27:07]  I mean, that would be good, actually.
[00:27:09]  I could.
[00:27:09]  You'd be good as me if you just, you know.
[00:27:11]  I don't know.
[00:27:12]  You've lost some weight.
[00:27:15]  Great to see you.
[00:27:16]  Take care.
[00:27:16]  He's off.
[00:27:17]  It's storming off.
[00:27:18]  Oh, am I meant to?
[00:27:19]  No, not yet.
[00:27:19]  It's fine.
[00:27:20]  I don't know.
[00:27:20]  If you want it, it's the done thing.
[00:27:21]  You can sit there for a bit if you like.
[00:27:26]  It wasn't exactly the election photo op that the Australian Prime Minister may have been hoping for just before the election at the weekend.
[00:27:31]  Now, Scott Morrison, who calls himself the bulldozer, lived up to his name and he broke off from campaigning in Tasmania to gate crash a boys' football game at Devonport Strykers Soccer Club.
[00:27:42]  This is what happened.
[00:27:55]  I've actually got a bit of sympathy for the Aussie PM.
[00:27:57]  I've got three sons, and whenever I play football with them, that was normally what used to happen at some stage.
[00:28:02]  The challenge when you reach a certain age and physical stature is that when you start to tumble, there's simply no stopping you.
[00:28:09]  And if there does happen to be a useful small object in the vicinity, they can be quite a useful buffer.
[00:28:14]  Morrison's not the first political leader to discover this.
[00:28:16]  Who could forget, of course, Boris Johnson's own battle with gravity and children back in 2015.
[00:28:31]  Well, Boris Johnson was merely the mayor of London back then, so he didn't do his political career any harm.
[00:28:35]  So maybe this will swing things the bulldozer's way in the Australian election.
[00:28:41]  Aunt says, and next, a woman who's become the first ever female to win Fisherman of the Year.
[00:28:47]  Is she thrilled about that or is she enraged that she has to be called a fisherman?
[00:28:52]  We'll find out after the break.
[00:29:04]  Welcome back to Piers World and Sense to take a look at this picture of Cristiano Ronaldo, the greatest footballer of all time and also the most followed man on Instagram, in fact, person on Instagram, pictured here with his son Cristiano Jr.
[00:29:14]  Impressive abs, right?
[00:29:16]  They're perilous.
[00:29:16]  Now clearly Cristiano is a world authority about abs.
[00:29:21]  And he knows a good ab when he sees one.
[00:29:25]  Yeah, I can see you have a good abdominal.
[00:29:27]  Thank you very much, Cristiano.
[00:29:29]  Thank you for appreciating that.
[00:29:31]  Something that gets a bit lost on the public.
[00:29:34]  Thank you, mate.
[00:29:34]  Appreciate you.
[00:29:35]  You're looking good yourself.
[00:29:37]  That clip is my pinned tweet.
[00:29:38]  It has now got to 39.8 million views, meaning it's the most watched clip about abdominal appreciation in the history of planet Earth.
[00:29:47]  Let's give it another push, everyone.
[00:29:48]  Let's just get it over the 40 million.
[00:29:50]  Come on.
[00:29:54]  Yeah, I can see you have a good abdominal.
[00:29:56]  Thank you very much, Cristiano.
[00:29:58]  Thank you for appreciating that.
[00:30:00]  Something that gets a bit lost on the public.
[00:30:03]  Thank you, mate.
[00:30:04]  Appreciate you.
[00:30:04]  You're looking good yourself.
[00:30:06]  I can never have that long off.
[00:30:08]  Yes, thank you.
[00:30:10]  If you're cringing over that clip, wait until you hear this.
[00:30:13]  Singer Taylor Swift received an honorary doctorate of fine arts from New York University today, NYU.
[00:30:19]  Here's what she had to say about cringe.
[00:30:23]  No matter how hard you try to avoid being cringe, you will look back on your life and cringe retrospectively.
[00:30:35]  She's right, but you know what, Taylor?
[00:30:37]  If my tombstone just says, here lies Piers Morgan, he had good abdominals, Cristiano Ronaldo.
[00:30:43]  That'll do me.
[00:30:44]  I don't care who cringes.
[00:30:46]  Gender-neutral job titles are all the rage these days.
[00:30:49]  The postman's a postal worker, the fireman has to be a firefighter, salesperson, chairperson, business person, and so tediously on.
[00:30:57]  But fortunately, I have found a saviour to all this PC nonsense.
[00:31:01]  She's Ashley Mullinger.
[00:31:03]  Not only has she just become the first woman to win the Fishing News Award Fisherman of the Year title, she has stunned the woke world by insisting that she still wants to be called a fisherman, not a fisher person.
[00:31:18]  And I'm joined by Fisherman of the Year, Ashley, now on her boat, fresh from today's catch.
[00:31:25]  Ashley, first of all, congratulations on your brilliant award.
[00:31:30]  Thank you ever so much, Piers.
[00:31:31]  I know that you take the craft of fishing very seriously.
[00:31:34]  And Fishing News, very highly respected magazine, obviously.
[00:31:39]  What did you feel when you heard you'd won?
[00:31:43]  To be honest, completely breathtaken by it, quite emotional.
[00:31:48]  Had to fight back a few tears when I was going up to collect the award.
[00:31:51]  But just to be recognised as a woman in the industry and to be nominated was enough for me, but to actually win it was really something else.
[00:32:00]  It's brilliant.
[00:32:01]  And normally when a woman wins something with the word man in it these days, the entire world goes completely nuts and almost compels that woman to distance herself from the title because you have to be a fisher or a fisher person or whatever they decide it has to be.
[00:32:19]  But in your case, you've said, no, staff there.
[00:32:21]  I want to be a fisherman of the year.
[00:32:24]  Absolutely.
[00:32:25]  And it's part of taking woke more than woke, isn't it?
[00:32:29]  It's that fact that I want to identify as a fisherman.
[00:32:32]  So surely I should be allowed to identify as whatever I choose, right?
[00:32:36]  I think so.
[00:32:36]  I mean, I just don't even know why we bother debating it.
[00:32:38]  I don't know why all these words have suddenly become sticks to beat people with.
[00:32:43]  You know, you hear people saying, we can't even use the word mankind.
[00:32:46]  I'm like, well, what happens with the Neil Armstrong clip when he lands on the moon?
[00:32:50]  You know, where do you take all this nonsense?
[00:32:54]  Well, and also, look at the end of every, at the end of, you know, woman is the word man.
[00:33:00]  Yes!
[00:33:01]  Exactly!
[00:33:02]  Yeah, exactly.
[00:33:04]  Are you going to become woes?
[00:33:08]  It's so absurd.
[00:33:08]  And look, I'm so happy you take this view because I do think the battle for common sense, especially on what I call the de-genderisation of language.
[00:33:17]  When you see that in hospitals, they can't use the word mother and all this kind of thing.
[00:33:22]  To me, it's just driving me nuts, and I'm not even a woman.
[00:33:25]  When people say it's the big question of the day, when they say, what is a woman?
[00:33:29]  What do you say?
[00:33:32]  A woman's whatever they want to be.
[00:33:35]  Whatever they want to be.
[00:33:37]  I'm not the person to make that, you know.
[00:33:40]  That's up to what they want to be.
[00:33:43]  And when you're the best fisherman in the country, which is what you've just been told you are, I want to talk to you about fish for a moment.
[00:33:52]  What's the greatest moment?
[00:33:53]  If I can let you relive, relive one moment of your entire fishing career, what would it be?
[00:33:59]  I know mine, because I've only had about three, and it was a 33-pound kingfish in Barbados that I caught, which I was quite pleased about.
[00:34:08]  But what's yours?
[00:34:09]  What's the big one for you?
[00:34:12]  Do you know what?
[00:34:13]  For me, it's not actually about the catching of the fish, but more about being the environment and having dolphins swim with the boat and those dolphins being away from the boat and coming towards the boat and like actively spending their time playing in the waves that the boat makes and then wanting to be near you almost.
[00:34:32]  And you know, they're not part of our everyday environment, but that was that brought tears.
[00:34:38]  Amazing.
[00:34:39]  Well, listen, Ashley, I'm thrilled for you because I've interviewed you before and I know how seriously you take the fishing and it's an amazing accolade that you've become Fisherman of the Year and I'm just particularly pleased you're happy to be called Fisherman of the Year.
[00:34:52]  So congratulations from everyone here at Piers Morgan Uncensored.
[00:34:57]  Thank you ever so much, Piers.
[00:34:59]  All the best.
[00:35:02]  Thanks.
[00:35:04]  Little moment of common sense victory.
[00:35:06]  Now what I'm about to tell you is not quite such a victory for common sense.
[00:35:10]  In fact, it sounds like I've just about to make this up, but it's true.
[00:35:12]  A British police officer successfully sued his force because colleagues repeatedly teased him about being Dolly Parton, BC Stephen Knox of Merseyside Police with awarded £12,000 over claims he was victimised.
[00:35:24]  He changed his shift patterns to suit his childcare needs, assuming the unsociable hours and nights normally associated with life on the beat, prompting colleagues to start singing this at him.
[00:35:35]  Working nights of mine, what a way to make living ready.
[00:35:40]  Getting by, it's all taking and all giving me.

=== Do You Give Them Credit (09:07) ===

[00:35:44]  Just use your mind.
[00:35:46]  Yeah, they called him Dolly Park because he was only working nine to five.
[00:35:51]  They even printed out photos of Dolly and plastered them on his desk.
[00:35:55]  But he found that unbelievably offensive.
[00:35:57]  Now, I don't want to be insensitive, but maybe defending us from hardened criminals isn't quite the right job for that guy.
[00:36:04]  To be honest, if you're that PC, you probably shouldn't be a PC.
[00:36:11]  And since the next, Prince Charles faces calls to apologise for Britain's colonial sins on his royal visit to Canada.
[00:36:17]  Should the royals, though, keep apologising for Britain's imperial past?
[00:36:20]  We'll debate that next.
[00:36:33]  With almost 70 years of service, the Queen has travelled more widely than any other monarch in British history.
[00:36:37]  With tradition and duty has been passed on to each generation, and in the past was always widely celebrated.
[00:36:43]  But in recent years, questions have been raised repeatedly about whether the royal family should do more to address their colonial past.
[00:36:50]  Well, Prince Charles attempted to broach a subject during a three-day tour of Canada.
[00:36:56]  As we look to our collective future as one people sharing one planet, we must find new ways to come to terms with the darker and more difficult aspects of the past.
[00:37:10]  Well, Sunday Times Royal Editor Roy Nikar joins me now along with Kayendi Andrews, Professor of Black Studies at Birmingham City University.
[00:37:17]  Welcome to both of you.
[00:37:18]  So, Roy, you've been around this royal block a long time.
[00:37:23]  It seems to me that what's been happening is with these royal tours, which used to be not that controversial, normally pretty celebratory, they've become now almost every single time controversial.
[00:37:36]  And it all goes back to colonialism, to the British Empire, how much the royal family on behalf of this country should be apologising for the sins of our past.
[00:37:45]  You've been on a lot of these tours.
[00:37:47]  Are you feeling a rising tide of controversy about that?
[00:37:53]  I have to say, in all honesty, no.
[00:37:55]  And I think it depends where you go.
[00:37:56]  I mean, I was in Belize with the Cambridges.
[00:37:59]  I went to Barbados with the Prince of Wales for the handover.
[00:38:02]  And actually, he made a really interesting speech during that tour.
[00:38:04]  He talked about acknowledging that slavery was abhorrent, but he didn't apologise.
[00:38:08]  William did the same in the Caribbean, but he didn't apologise.
[00:38:13]  He talked about, they acknowledged our past.
[00:38:16]  I think it's right to do that.
[00:38:18]  And I think we've got to recognise that.
[00:38:19]  It sounds apologetic to me.
[00:38:21]  It does, but it's not apologies.
[00:38:22]  I mean, I mean, I should say the words, I'm sorry, but there's a lot of regret, a lot of, we've got to look back on the past, a lot of revisionism back to a previous era history.
[00:38:32]  And I just wonder where that stops, because isn't it going to affect every tour they do?
[00:38:37]  I don't think so.
[00:38:38]  And I think it's a recognition by members of the royal family and the palace and the government on whose behalf they're travelling on lots of these tours that we are in different times.
[00:38:45]  We didn't have tours for the best part of two years.
[00:38:47]  We are in different times.
[00:38:48]  Black Lives Matter has happened.
[00:38:50]  Other movements have happened.
[00:38:51]  And I think the royal family feel it's their role to sort of stay relevant, to acknowledge when things have gone wrong.
[00:38:56]  And I thought that statement by William after the Caribbean tour was fascinating.
[00:38:59]  He acknowledged that things had gone wrong and said the whole point of tours is to go and hear and listen and reflect.
[00:39:06]  I don't think it's the role of the royal family to go around the world apologising.
[00:39:09]  And they've stopped short of that.
[00:39:10]  I think there's a reason for that.
[00:39:11]  Interesting distinctions.
[00:39:12]  Let's bring in Kayendi Andrews.
[00:39:15]  I know you're not the world's biggest fan of the monarchy.
[00:39:17]  In fact, you might well be one of the least biggest fans of the monarchy.
[00:39:20]  But putting that aside, Gendi, this issue of whether the royal family, on behalf of Britain, should be going around expressing themselves in the way that they are about the colonial past, about the empire and so on.
[00:39:34]  My question for you really is, does it really make any difference?
[00:39:37]  Why is everyone clamouring for the royals to do this?
[00:39:40]  Does it really matter if the royal family keeps saying we've got to think about what happened before, we've got to reflect and so on?
[00:39:49]  Well, I think it's a bad time is what I would say.
[00:39:52]  It's the 21st century, and the Queen is the head of state of 15 countries, including my family from Jamaica.
[00:39:57]  And it's frankly been ridiculous since independence and is ridiculous now, which is why these topics are coming up.
[00:40:03]  I mean, I do agree with you on this one, though.
[00:40:04]  I mean, an apology is meaningless.
[00:40:06]  I mean, apologies is pointless.
[00:40:07]  This is about reparations.
[00:40:08]  This is about repenting.
[00:40:10]  And really, there's nothing the royal family could do in the Queen in particular to apologise other than really resign, get rid of them, gone and give all their money back to the people they stole it from in the colonies.
[00:40:20]  I mean, look, in a way, it's the same debate that people have been having in America and Britain about statues, for example, of people who perhaps were controversial public figures who had good sides and bad sides.
[00:40:33]  From Churchill, we saw the statues of Churchill, Mandela and Gandhi boarded up at Parliament Square.
[00:40:39]  We've just seen Margaret Thatcher's has been egged within hours of being put up.
[00:40:42]  We're seeing the same thing happening in America.
[00:40:44]  My point about that and about the British Empire and all of these things is that there is good and bad in all these things.
[00:40:52]  Why are we so preoccupied?
[00:40:55]  Let me ask the question.
[00:40:56]  Why are we so preoccupied with looking back to times in history and focusing almost exclusively now on the negative?
[00:41:05]  Because A, it's not just history.
[00:41:08]  And B, the history is so negative, it shapes the present.
[00:41:11]  So when you had a tour of the royal family, and bear in mind, the Royal African Company was the company that enslaved more Africans than any other company in the entire world, that got rich off slavery, that got rich off colonialism.
[00:41:22]  The Queen still wears jewels from India when she goes to these places, etc.
[00:41:27]  And they're wealthy because of that oppression.
[00:41:29]  And then you go to something like Jamaica and the Caribbean, which is poor.
[00:41:32]  We're only there because of slavery, because of that oppression.
[00:41:35]  That's not something that happened historically.
[00:41:36]  That's something we're dealing with today, which is why people are not.
[00:41:39]  Does Britain get any credit for something in the past?
[00:41:42]  Right, but does Britain get any credit for helping to abolish international slave trade?
[00:41:47]  Do you give them any credit for that, the country?
[00:41:49]  No, when you are the country that enslaved more people than anybody else, you don't get any credit whatsoever for finally deciding to stop that practice.
[00:41:57]  Really?
[00:41:58]  No, there's no credit deserved.
[00:41:59]  And it's farciful to suggest.
[00:42:02]  So no society can give...
[00:42:06]  Right, but see, that's where I don't agree with you.
[00:42:08]  I think they should get, I think every one country's people should always get credit for acknowledging things are wrong and changing them.
[00:42:14]  Otherwise, how do you ever evolve as a society?
[00:42:18]  No, then if you're going to acknowledge it, that means you have to repent for it.
[00:42:22]  That means you have to repay the people.
[00:42:23]  What does that mean?
[00:42:23]  Repent can do the Caribbean today are poor.
[00:42:26]  It can be reparations.
[00:42:28]  What do you want the Royals to do?
[00:42:29]  Because of what Britain did.
[00:42:31]  What do you want the Royals to do?
[00:42:32]  What is the point?
[00:42:33]  What is the repentance?
[00:42:35]  I will tell you right there.
[00:42:36]  The only thing the Royals can do on this issue is renounce the throne, dissolve their assets and give them to the Caribbean and India and the rest of the colonies.
[00:42:42]  Simple.
[00:42:43]  That is repentance.
[00:42:44]  That is reparation.
[00:42:45]  Anything short of that?
[00:42:46]  Okay.
[00:42:46]  I agree with you.
[00:42:47]  It's pointless.
[00:42:48]  Okay.
[00:42:48]  Roy, I mean, look, I get why passions run high about these things.
[00:42:53]  I get some of the points Gandhi's making.
[00:42:56]  The Royals aren't going to do this, though, are they?
[00:42:58]  I mean, there's a limit to, I think, how far this is going to go.
[00:43:01]  I mean, the Royals will say we need to mark it and respect it and look back and reflect and so on.
[00:43:07]  But they're not going to go as far as Gandy's talking about.
[00:43:10]  They're definitely not going to renounce the throne and give up all their assets and return to the Caribbean and the rest.
[00:43:16]  I think what we've seen in the last three tours is the mood music change.
[00:43:20]  We've heard Charles and William reflecting on the past.
[00:43:24]  That's clearly been in conjunction with the government and the Foreign Office, but I think that is probably as far as they're going to go.
[00:43:30]  You're going to be very busy the next couple of weeks.
[00:43:32]  One question for you before we let you go.
[00:43:34]  Is the Queen going to make her own Jubilee?
[00:43:36]  Every time we think we're not going to see her again, up she pops looking dazzling and radiant.
[00:43:41]  My prediction on that is, yes, she will.
[00:43:43]  She will, because she's just the ultimate trooper, right?
[00:43:45]  She's the ultimate trooper, I think we'll see her at Trooping, and I think we will see her fingers crossed, fingers crossed if she was up to it at the Epsom Doctor.
[00:43:52]  Candy, despite your reluctance to celebrate the monarchy, will you say anything nice about the Queen as she celebrates her Platinum Jubilee?
[00:44:01]  I don't even know what date it is.
[00:44:02]  That's how much I'm disinterested I have in this whole debacle.
[00:44:06]  Candy, always good to catch up with you.
[00:44:08]  Thank you very much for joining me.
[00:44:09]  And Roya, thank you very much.
[00:44:10]  Thank you.
[00:44:12]  I had a go at public servants working from home early in the show.
[00:44:15]  Well, seemingly nothing can lure them back to their offices.
[00:44:18]  I think I may have found out why.
[00:44:26]  It's the barely fathomable revelation that staff on the Department for Work, yes, work and pensions, have been offered feel-good seminars on smut.
[00:44:35]  The 45-minute course entitled The History of Sex Toys is described as a titillating time warp through ancient Greece via the Victorians up to the modern day.
[00:44:44]  Well, that's just great, isn't it?
[00:44:46]  That's going to sort out wade stagnation and the inflation crisis and soaring food prices.

=== Why Staff Stay Home (00:28) ===

[00:44:52]  More than two years into a pandemic and 73% of the staff of Department of Work and Pensions are still at home.
[00:44:59]  I can't imagine why, can you?
[00:45:01]  Well, that's it from me.
[00:45:03]  Tomorrow night, the first exclusive interview with British TV's Queen of Mean, Anne Robinson, since she quit countdown.
[00:45:11]  Until then, whatever you're up to, just make sure it's uncensored.
[00:45:15]  And in the words of Van Robinson, or rather, the eyes of Van Robinson.
[00:45:20]  Good night.