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July 21, 2022 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
44:40
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The Diana Interview Cover-Up 00:12:41
Good lady, welcome to Piers Morgan Uncensored.
It was the interview that almost brought down the royal family.
Martin Bashir's 1995 BBC Panorama interview sent shockwaves around the world, but last year a report found that he deceived Princess Diana's brother Earl Spencer to secure the bombshell revelations.
One of the victims of that deception, William and Harry's former nanny, Tiggy Leg Burke, has been awarded substantial damages by the BBC over smears made against her.
Bashir claimed she was having an affair with Prince Charles and even invented an aborted pregnancy.
Well now Earl Spencer has called for serious repercussions against those to blame.
He tweeted, well, I'm delighted to see that another innocent victim of this appalling scandal is being vindicated.
It's amazing to me that no criminal charges have been levelled against those responsible yet.
Well joining me now is former BBC Panorama senior producer Mark Killick, who was sacked after trying to raise concerns about the interview, and Dickie Arbiter, who was the Queen's press secretary when the Bashir interview took place.
Welcome to both of you.
Mark Killick, this is a really bad day for the BBC coming after a lot of bad days in this scandal, frankly.
But the idea that the BBC has had to issue another grovelling apology to William and Harry's former nanny over really disgraceful smears and untrue claims and has now been awarded substantial damages.
What do you make of this?
You were part of the Panorama team that put out this interview and I know that you yourself were appallingly treated and we'll come to that.
What do you make of today's revelations?
Well, it's good news for Tiggy Leg Board.
Let's be honest about that.
The real tragedy is that it took so long for the BBC to make this apology and pay this compensation.
And I think Tiggy made it clear in her court statement that she felt the process had been overly dragged out.
The BBC was dragging its feet.
And I think that's been the story all the way through, frankly, that victims of this scandal have had to fight for the apologies.
It hasn't been given gracefully.
I think the BBC hasn't covered itself in glory, even in this late stage, though in fairness to Tim Davey, at least he started the process of and has tried to cleanse the stable.
Now, for those who are coming to this completely new today, or perhaps watching from around the world in America and Australia, where the show airs, just very briefly summarise exactly what has happened here.
Martin Bashir did this bombshell interview.
We all remember watching it.
The world watched this interview.
Shocking revelations from start to finish.
It precipitated a whole chain of events that led to the divorce between Diana and Charles.
So enormous repercussions.
The Queen ordered them to settle things after this because it was simply untenable.
But it then began to, rumours began to circulate that Bashir may have used dirty tricks to try and persuade Diana to do it.
This then later, it turned out, involved forging bank statements in which he was claiming to Earl Spencer, look, all these people have been paid money to basically betray your sister.
And then that wormed him into the trust.
And then Diana agreed to the interview.
Is that pretty much where we are with this story?
Well, it is pretty much.
And it is first worth saying that we were all mesmerized.
It was a global scoop.
And on Panorama, we celebrated.
But I was very quickly bought the bank statements by the graphic designer who produced them at Martin Bashir's request.
And they were clearly false.
And the narrative they told just didn't look credible.
I took legal advice in the BBC and referred the matter up the chain of command and was told within 24 hours that I wouldn't be required on the show anymore.
The programme only wanted loyal people.
As the BBC investigated, it became very clear that senior management didn't want to know the truth either.
That those of us who were trying to look at this and work out what had happened, and it was a fairly horrific story of deception on an industrial scale and the exploitation of, you know, frankly, a vulnerable woman.
But the BBC management decided, in my judgment at least, that they'd rather cover it up than face the truth.
You were sacked, you were branded a troublemaker, all for just raising red flags that turned out to be completely correct and should have been acted upon.
There was a massive cover-up.
As with all these things, the cover-up was almost worse than the original offence.
And we're now in a situation where the BBC has made a series of apologies, paid out a load of money, and Earl Spencer has today come out and said he thinks that there should be journalists connected with this who should be prosecuted or management who should be prosecuted.
What's your view of that?
Well, when you stand back and you think about the forgery, you think about the industrial scale deceptions, you think about the exploitation of Diana, they're horrific things on the one hand.
And that's a matter, if it's criminal, for the CPS.
But also, I think you have to accept the fact that Bashir had to resign his job, that he's been humiliated, he's been disgraced, he's been labelled a dishonest reporter by a High Court judge.
So he's not, you know, he has suffered too.
I think the real issue is the police have looked at the Dyson report and they make it clear, they looked at the Dyson report to decide whether a criminal threshold has been reached.
And I think my issue is that the story is wider than Lord Dyson's report.
And Lord Dyson accepts this.
I think the police and the CPS to make a fully informed decision has to talk to Charlie Spencer, has to talk to Tiggy, has to talk to some of the others.
And what will emerge from that is a wider story than the police are seeing just by looking at the Dyson report itself.
Right.
So Dickie Arbiter, you were the Queen's press secretary at the time.
And this was an absolute earthquake, wasn't it?
I was in the newspaper game at the time and we were all just open-mouthed watching this interview.
Every single thing.
We were open mouthed.
Every second was like a bombshell, wasn't it?
What were you feeling watching it?
Well, we were watching a bombshell.
We were told a couple of hours before the transmission, although Steve Hewlett, sadly he died in 2017 of cancer, was very bullish in that he claimed he told Buckingham Palace a couple of weeks beforehand.
And if you denied it and argued with him, you'd be verbally beaten up.
Now, the thing is that those in the know were Steve Hewlett, who was the editor of Panorama, Director General John Burt, and head of news, Tony Hall.
They were the ones that knew.
They kept out of the frame.
Now, this is interesting because nobody's actually bringing it up.
They kept out of the frame the chairman of the BBC, Marmaduke Hussey.
Why?
Because his wife was lady in waiting to the Queen.
And if he knew, then the Queen would know.
So they kept key people out of the frame while they kept the sort of coterie, Hewlett, Hall, and Burt, completely keeping the whole thing under wraps.
It was, to my mind, a shameful interview.
The way the BBC has handled it subsequently is shameful.
Why it's taken 27 years to pay compensation to Tiggy Leg Burke, who's lived with this cloud since 1995.
It's all wrong and there needs to be a proper investigation by proper people.
I'm not sure the police are the right people because they seem to fail on every investigation they do.
But do you think Earl Spencer has a point when he thinks that there should be criminal charges here?
Very difficult on criminal charges.
Criminal charges should be levied.
They should be on Bashir because at the end of the day, he forged documents.
Did he forge legitimate documents?
That is the question, or were they just made up?
They were fake documents in the first place.
BBC, did they actually commit a crime?
No, they didn't commit a crime, although they were complicit in the transmission of what has proved to be a fake and a lie from the beginning to the end.
There's a clip we've got, I think, of Prince William talking about this interview and the impact that it had.
Have we got that clip?
I think it's had great impact.
The deceitful way the interview was obtained substantially influenced what my mother said.
The interview was a major contribution to making my parents' relationship worse and has since hurt countless others.
Now, Dickie, here's the rub with this.
I'm sure William absolutely believes that and was completely incensed and has remained incensed ever since with the BBC and Bashir for what went down.
And obviously, he was a young man when this interview was aired and it would have had a huge impact.
It led directly to his parents getting divorced.
However, and it's quite a big however, I think, in terms of how history will look back at this, I had lunch with Diana and Prince William at Kensington Palace about six months after this interview aired.
And I talked to her about the interview and I said, do you have any regrets?
And she said, none.
She said she was glad she said what she said.
She wanted to say it in public.
She was glad she had her say and she had no regrets.
Now, that wasn't just in the immediate aftermath.
That was after a lot of Furore, a lot of consequences.
And she had concluded that actually she was glad she did it.
Does that change, do you think, how we should view all this?
Well, it's quite interesting.
You say that you had lunch with her six weeks after the interview.
I saw her two days after the interview and I said, why the hell did you do that?
She said, she shrugged her shoulders and said, yeah, I'm sorry I did it.
It's a bit like when she helped Andrew Morton in 1992.
She was sorry she did it.
Was she being honest?
I really don't know.
The trouble with Diana at the time, she was very vulnerable.
She felt that people were spying on her.
Her own staff were spying on her.
Prince Charles' staff was spying on her.
None of us were spying on her.
Often we gave her advice, which she didn't like, but she adhered to, wouldn't talk to me for several weeks afterwards if I gave her something, advice about something that she wanted to do, which was a bad idea.
But she'd come back and, you know, we would start talking again.
So she was vulnerable.
She was, I won't say paranoid, although a number of MPs did call her paranoid and friends of Prince Charles called her paranoid.
She wasn't paranoid, but she was a lonely lady.
She was a very complicated lady, and she felt that everybody was against her because they were against her.
Her apartment, eight and nine at Kensington Palace, were being bugged.
Yeah, I mean, she was a complicated lady.
Mark Killey, just finally to you.
I mean, it just was interesting to me.
It was actually six months after this.
It's quite a long time had gone past, a lot of scrutiny, analysis, fallout, and so on.
But she was pretty firm with me that she did not regret it.
Does that make any difference to you in terms of your involvement with all this?
I'm not sure it does.
I think the issues are the breach of journalistic ethics.
I think the issues are the way the BBC decided to cover it up rather than to investigate it.
I think the issue as well is the message it sent to the whole of the BBC news staff.
The fact is, If you wanted to whistleblow, you were going to lose your job.
You were going to get in trouble.
That's the message it sent.
And I think that echoed on for a generation, frankly, which is fairly scary.
We look at some of the other scandals when people say, why didn't anybody say anything?
Well, you know what happens when you do say stuff.
I can't really help in terms of Diana herself.
I do wonder whether, having done it, she decided to tough it out.
Well, she was very stubborn like that, and she might well have done actually.
I think, Mark, you were treated absolutely appallingly.
And I'm glad that you're very belatedly getting completely vindicated in the way that you have been, but you should never have gone through all this.
And one thing I can say, and I think, Dickie, you would probably go along with this.
Had, you know, when I was an editor of the Daily Mirror at the time, had I been the one that had done this, forged documents to persuade Dinah to do this and spread these kind of rumors about Tigule, but you can just imagine what the BBC would have said about a tabloid editor and a tabloid newspaper.
They would certainly have been leading the charge for the most punitive possible recriminations.
And that, I think, is where this slightly sticks in my gullet: that the BBC, at the time this was all happening, they were the ones sticking it to all the tabloids about them and their ethics.
I remember it because I was one of the targets.
Mark's Painful Treatment 00:04:31
So there's a certain chardon for it.
It was the BBC's, Piers, it was the BBC's phone hacking moment.
Right.
And they singly failed it.
Yeah, Dickie, final word to you on this.
What will happen, do you think?
I think at the end of the day, the BBC felt they're untouchable.
They still feel that they're untouchable.
There is an attitude that permeates.
It's an arrogance that permeates that, yeah, we're the BBC.
You can't touch us.
They'll cover up and they'll keep covering up.
But this is really out in the open and it needs to be investigated properly.
It needs to be an extension of Lord Dyson to go deeper into it, to really hammer and question Messrs. Burton Hall, because they were the ones at the top.
As I said earlier, Steve Hewlett is dead.
He can't answer the questions.
But Burton Hall can answer the questions and they should be made to answer those questions.
Yep, completely agree.
Dickie Arbiter, Mark Kelly, thank you very much.
Really appreciate it.
Well, back in June, Sharon Osborne told her fellow Talk TV panelists that her husband, rock legend Aussie, needed major surgery and it was an operation which would determine the rest of his life.
And she hasn't left his side since.
But over the weekend, Aussie was spotted for the first time.
She's living hospital out and about with Sharon and the kids in LA.
I'm delighted to say Sharon joins me now live.
Sharon, good evening to you.
Good evening, my darling.
Now, I've spent the last 20 minutes boasting about the fact it was going to be you and Aussie and he's done a runner.
He's a bastard tonight, let me tell you.
Now he's back walking.
He's a diva.
Before it was like, oh, you know, the nicest guy, you know, please help me do this, do that.
Now he's walking.
He's like, oh, I don't want to do it.
I'm not doing this.
I'll do this.
So he's become a diva again.
He thinks his bloody Beyoncé.
Well, I quite like the fact he's a diva again because it means he's healthy again, at least.
And he's been, let's be honest, Aussie's been through a hell of a series of health battles, hasn't he?
He diagnosed with a form of Parkinson's.
He had a rough bout of COVID and then he had this surgery on his, I think on his neck, right?
And does this all go back, Sharon?
Does it all go back to when he had the terrible quad bike accident?
Part of it, yes, yes, part of it, because then he had another serious fall on his neck, and then it affected his spine because the spinal column was trapped.
So it's just been, it's like a domino effect.
You do one thing medically, then another thing happens and another.
And it's just been nearly, it's three and a half years of just nightmare.
But you know what?
There's light now and he's walking great.
He's got no more pain.
He's a pain in my ass because he's now a diva, but I don't mind.
But he's good.
How is he feeling?
Other than being a diva, how's he feeling?
He's doing good because there's no pain.
The last operation fixed all the pain that he'd been in for, you know, three and a half years.
So that way, you know, it's like lifting, you know, a huge weight from him.
So, you know, he's busy doing promotion for his record that's coming out in September and he's loving life right now.
Is he going to be able to perform live tour again, do you think?
Yes, next year, definitely.
Well, I mean, that's amazing.
Given where he was, you must be thrilled, huh?
Oh, it's like a miracle, Piers.
And he's like, you know, his song, Iron Man, he really is Iron Man.
I mean, he comes back over and over again.
He does.
He's unbelievable.
I mean, I know it's been really rough for you because we've had a few, you know, quite intense conversations in the last couple of years about Aussie's various health things.
You're unbelievably close to each other.
You were on the other side of the world a couple of times when he was, you know, taken with COVID and then he had to have the surgery and stuff.
It's been rough for you, Sharon.
How have you dealt with it all?
Oh, it's, you know, it's not just me, it's the whole family because, you know, you're always on edge like this.
You know, every cough, every, you know, every time he would stumble trying to walk, I mean, you're just on edge.
But it's, you know, it's just behind us.
And now all we can do is just, you know, hope and look into the light and everything's going to be fine.
And listen, 10 days ago, Jack had his baby girl.
Jack's New Baby Joy 00:04:34
Yes.
And so that's brought such joy.
And Kelly's pregnant.
It's fantastic.
The Osborne Breeding Factory is alive and well.
It is.
It is.
We're back in business.
Are they basically breeding the next generation of wild rock chicks and blokes?
I hope so.
Well, look, please send, Sharon, send them all my very best, won't you?
Aussie, Kelly and Jack.
I want to talk to you, if I can, just about a couple of things in the news because we miss you on the talk.
Can't wait for you to be back on that.
I want to talk to you about a couple of things.
One, your reaction to this extraordinary story, that Diana interview that we all remember so well and the appalling fallout where it turns out Martin Bashir just basically forged documents to persuade people around Diana that all sorts of stuff was going down, including Tiggy Led Burt, the boy's nanny, having an affair with Charles, having an abortion after being impregnated by himself.
All complete nonsense, but all designed to get into Diana's paranoid mind so that she did the interview.
What do you think of it?
Yes.
I mean, it's horrendous.
You would never believe that this could have gone on with the BBC.
That, you know, their credibility, they're, you know, the biggest news agency in the world.
Everything they do is, you know, perfect, perfect.
They're the perfect news station.
And it's like, look at what they did to a family.
Just think if they hadn't have done that, that marriage might have turned out very, very differently.
Just think about that.
Everybody's lives would have turned out so differently.
And it's appalling.
It's like unthinkable to think of the damage mentally, physically that the BBC did to the royal family and not just the royal family, people that were very loyal to them.
Yes.
I mean, Tiggy was unbelievably loyal.
Never gave interviews, never talked about them.
Total social discretion.
Never, ever.
And the thing is, it too, the nation turned, listen, divorced, you never get involved in people's divorces ever.
That's one thing I've learned.
But with everything that was being reported, Charles looked such, so bad, so bad.
And the whole nation at that time were against him.
And it was all for, you know, about Diana.
But it's, you know, I get that.
But if they hadn't have done that, maybe they could have got their marriage back together.
And, you know, who knows what could have happened.
Yeah.
The other royal thing that's been in the news is this big Tom Bauer book about Megan and Harry paints a pretty awful picture actually of the pair of them.
And we have this bizarre speech by Harry on Nelson Mandela Day this week, sort of linking their own struggle for freedom with Nelson Mandela's 27 years in prison.
What do you make of these two?
What's going on with them?
I think they're lost and I think that they're trying to find their place in the world.
I think they're totally lost.
You know, one minute they're making a cartoon, then they're doing a documentary on them.
Now they're saving the world.
They just haven't found their path in life yet.
I really believe that.
They're lost.
They're floundering.
Should they be?
But Sharon, my point is they can do what the hell they like, but should they be allowed to use the royal titles to fleece the system and make all this money and pretend to be like a rival royal family?
That's what stinks in my gullet about it.
Yeah, I just don't, I haven't from day one been into the fact of, you know, talking about private things that went on in the royal family when they were a part of it.
And the thing is, it's just their point of view.
We haven't had the other point of view.
And it's like, don't bring it to the public.
Nobody wants to know about it.
Every family has problems.
Keep it to yourself.
Keep it to yourself.
And I just think that from day one, they've handled it very badly.
And you know what?
They wanted their freedom.
They have it.
But they want more than just their freedom.
They want to be two very important people politically.
Yeah, but they want the royal cake and eat it.
But if they keep poking their nose into American political affairs and the constitution and so on, it's not going to end well.
I can tell them that.
I want to talk to you also about.
It's like he's only, I was just going to say, he's only been here two minutes and he wants to run the country.
It's like, hold on.
Dave Chappelle Free Speech 00:04:50
It's completely absurd.
Talking about Dave Chappelle.
So Dave Chappelle, I don't know if you'd be following this, but he did this big Netflix special.
He told some trans jokes.
You know, some people thought it was funny, including trans people.
Other people, including other trans people, hated it, wanted him cancelled.
Netflix stood by him.
But he was due to play in a gig in Minneapolis yesterday.
And they cancelled it, the organisers, at the last minute, and issued this ridiculous, pompous statement about how they hadn't been aware that it wouldn't be a safe space for employees and so on.
What do you make of this?
It comes at a time when John Cleese actually has come out with an interesting comment about the threat to comedy at the moment from this cancelled culture.
Here's what John Cleese had to say.
A lot of comedians now are sitting there.
And when they think of something, they start thinking, could I get away with that?
I don't think so.
So-and-so got into trouble when he said that or she said that.
You see what I mean?
And that's the death of creativity.
And I think he's, look, I'm not a big fan of John Cleese, to be honest these days.
He's a bit of a miserable old boar and he can't stand me, but that's neither here nor there.
Oh, I love him.
I love him.
But we'll agree to disagree about him.
I'll probably get on five of him, actually.
If you're watching, John, come and do an interview.
But here's what the statement that really made me puke.
The Dave Chappelle show tonight at First Avenue has been cancelled.
To staff artists in our community, we hear you.
We are sorry.
We know we must hold ourselves to the highest standards.
We let you down.
We're not just a blank box of people in it.
We understand first heavy is not just a room, but meaningful beyond our walls.
The team and you have worked hard to make our venues the safest species in the country.
And we'll continue with that mission.
We believe in diverse voices and the freedom of artistic expression.
But in honoring that, we lost sight of the impacts we'd have.
I mean, what a load of old guff.
What they really mean is...
It's just...
We are going to decide what you're allowed to find funny.
That's it.
It's ridiculous.
It's, again, a case of freedom of speech.
This man is a brilliant writer, a brilliant comic.
And when you watch him, he just doesn't tell silly jokes one after the other to try and offend.
It always goes with a story.
And there's always the beginning, middle, and end.
And it always comes around to, well, what do you think about it?
This is what I think.
And he does it superbly.
The point is, he's not transphobic.
If we can't...
He's not transphobic, but he thinks you should be able to tell.
You should be able to tell jokes about trans people, like we told jokes about everybody.
And actually, they're funny as jokes.
Of course.
And the thing is, the thing is, if there are many trans people that don't, that he offends, it's very, very simple.
Don't watch.
Turn it off.
Go and watch something else.
But there are also millions of people that love him, that do want to watch him.
I'm one of them.
I think he's a genius.
But the thing is, it's like, it's simple.
Why do people make such a big deal about, you know what he does, you know what he's famous for, don't watch it.
Simple.
I think if we can't tell inappropriate jokes anymore, you and I are going to have to go and live on a desert island somewhere with Aussie.
Oh, God, we might as well live in bloody Russia.
I mean, if you can't laugh, right?
You've got to laugh.
You know, you've got to have irony.
You've got to laugh.
With the state of the world right now, if you can't go out or watch something at home that's funny, what are we going to do?
Do you know what I read the other day was that there's lots of WhatsApp groups now that everybody's on where inappropriate jokes are told because it's in secret.
And I thought, how incredible, what a damning indictment of our society.
In a way, it is a bit like Russia or North Korea or China, where people feel that they have to go underground to crack a joke in case somebody's upset and you end up losing your job or your livelihood.
Exactly.
I mean, all the time people send me things and I'm like, where the hell did you find that?
You know, and some of them are funny, some of them aren't, but it's like, who the hell is making all this stuff?
But some of it is very funny.
Sharon, fantastic.
It's humor.
Of course it's humor.
Go on.
Sharon, great to talk to you.
Send Aussie my best.
Tell him I'm sorry he bottled it, but as soon as he grows a pair, get on this show and be uncensored for me.
He owes me one, all right?
He owes you big time, and I'm going to tell him he's got to come on and do a river dance for you.
Yes, he has.
I look forward to seeing him very soon.
Sharon, great to talk to you.
I'm so glad the old man's back on his feet.
I know how worried you've been as a family.
He is indomitable.
He's indestructible.
And unfortunately, he's not on the show.
But we will see him soon.
Sharon, great to see you.
Liz Truss Party Chaos 00:10:39
All right.
All the best.
Loves you.
Bye.
Well, from one impossibly glamorous lady to three of them, tonight's Stella Brestpack.
I mean, talk about being spoiled.
A talk TV put into Kate McCann is making her debut in my studio.
Talk TV's international editor, even more lofty title, Isabel Oksha and journalist and broadcaster Emily Sheffield.
Time to get inappropriate and uncensored.
They can't wait.
Well welcome back to Charlie's Angels.
Here I am.
We're talking to the international editor Isabel Hugshot, journalist and broadcaster Emily Sheffield, and Talk TV's political editor Kate McCann who is gracing us with her regal presence this evening for the first time in my studio.
Welcome.
Thank you very much.
What are your thoughts?
You like it?
It's bigger than I expected.
Just say that to all the hosts.
Let's talk about talking a bigger than expected.
Liz Truss, this new poll coming out tonight, youGov, showing a much bigger than expected lead amongst Conservative Party members who will decide this eventually as to who they want to run the country, way ahead, way bigger than it was last time.
If you're Rishi Sunak, you're worried, aren't you?
Yeah, I think you are.
And I think that's why the conversation so far has been all about what MPs think in Westminster.
But it's almost completely irrelevant because this next stage moves to the members.
And this poll shows you what they really think, which is that Liz Truss is the person for them.
And that's why this tax conversation about tax cuts, when they should happen, how big they should be, is absolutely vital.
I think it's the big decision, right?
Because they now have a clear divide between Rishi Sunak, who keeps talking about, I'm the real Thatcher.
In other words, actually, to start with, she actually put up some taxes and then when the economy recovered, she then slashed them.
Whereas Liz Truss says, actually, I'm the real Thatcher.
She mentioned Thatcher's name three times in one sentence today.
And she says, because actually I believe in small government and cut the taxes.
You can't have both.
So the party has to make a call about which way it goes.
Yeah, and the party has to make a call about what conservatism is.
And what's been happening for quite a long time is that the party in Westminster has actually moved away from what the membership in the country is.
And we've seen that in elections.
Yes, Boris Johnson held the red wall, but that was a shift in itself.
And look what's been happening in the South in those seats that the party used to rely on.
They're not Tory anymore.
They're lib dem.
And that's a problem that the party has recognized, but no one's really done anything about.
And this could be the deciding factor for the direction it goes.
And crucially, what happens at the next general election?
Because when you look at the polling there, it's not the same.
The general population prefer Rishi Sunak over Liz Truss.
And that's a problem.
Do the membership go for who they will win the next election with or who they prefer when it comes to their hearts.
Well, Emily, that's a good point because she's been saying, sorry, he's been saying, Rishi Sunak today, I've got a better chance of winning the election.
This is a bigger picture that's going on here.
But actually, some of the most recent polling today shows even that is narrowing now.
And that actually, if you ask who they think will beat Keir Starmer, I think Liz Truss is pretty well up with him now.
So she's making a lot of inroads here into Rishi Sunak's apparently unassailable position.
If I'm Ms. Camp, I'm worried about this.
His camp will be worried about it, but I think it is still early days.
We don't have long because most of those ballots are going to get returned in early August.
And I think time is running out for Sunak.
But she's come out with her big tax cutting.
The Tories have been totally wrong for the last 20 years.
It's all about tax cuts.
As long as we tax cut, there's going to be mega growth.
Everything's going to be fine.
I don't need to find any money for all these big spending splurges.
She's going up for 3% on defence.
That's just, you know, there was another one giving tax breaks to families today.
Sounds great.
Sounds sexy.
More money in our pockets.
Take away, give us big tax cuts.
But is any of it real?
Because it's just got to be said there have been some quite clever people sitting in that chancellor chair over the last 20 years.
So they're all wrong.
Apparently, you're going to cut taxes and you're going to get growth.
And it's literally as simple as that.
I mean, if it's a people, why do we need a treasure?
Well, exactly.
And Isabel, there is some amusing footage of Miss Truss actually applauding people like Philip Hammond when they sit down after basically did the complete opposite to what she now says.
She hated all this stuff.
Really?
Were you reporting and slapping him on the back?
Well, look, I'm going to stick my neck out here and say that Liz Truss is going to win this contest and she's going to win it by a really big margin.
Should she win it?
Look, no one ever used the election message.
No one ever voted for more of the same.
I mean, I am astounded that Rishi Sunak's team think that they can win this by saying I'm just going to carry on with the historically high taxes that I've imposed.
70-year high.
Is that really going to appeal?
We have the Tory membership.
There's a third-year pandemic.
There's a war in Ukraine, right?
I mean, this is incredibly serious times.
I'm reminded of that movie, The American President with Michael Douglas, when he eventually rounds on his opponent who's attacking him.
And he says, these are serious times that require serious people, Bob.
And I thought of that today, and I was like, isn't Sunak, I mean, the Times leader today came out in favour of Sunak, saying, we need a grown-up with a massive brain.
And actually, it seems to me, Sunak is that guy.
Now, will the members go for the massive brain or will they go for Mother Christmas?
Well, to be pissing out of the city.
To be fair, she also has a massive brain.
I mean, this is a woman with a degree from Oxford and plenty of credible experience of her own right.
What they will go for is the candidate who wrote the opinion piece in the Daily Mail today, which ticks every single one of the membership's boxes.
She's talking about making an opportunity of Brexit, and don't imagine that Brexit has gone away as an issue for the membership.
She's talking about getting rid of wokery, something that should appeal to you.
She's talking about ending this culture of talking down our country, our history, and our culture.
Look, this ticked every single box.
All Rissi Sunak has to offer is a pretty glossy campaign and telling us that we're all going to have to put up with years more taxes.
It's not really a winning address.
He's not said that.
He has not said that.
He said, I've got to deal with inflation first, and then I'm going to cut taxes.
He's going to be trying to slash them now.
That is the traditional Tory stance.
And I think you're quite right.
I think a lot of us, a lot of people who have been Tories for many years, are right to be thinking, what is going on here?
Because they're both appealing to different elements of the Tory party.
Tax cuts, yes, but what about the city?
Rod Lidd made an interesting point today where I think he wrote a spectator or somewhere saying it's all been way too quick, this process, and that within a week, we've gone from Boris Johnson to the final two.
And that's nowhere near long enough.
You know, in America, they go for a much longer nomination process.
Well, I just think in the end, the point about a nomination process is it's very rigorous.
In America, you go through debate after debate after debate.
We've had, what, two debates, and here we are.
The final two, take it or leave it, just decided, as you say, by 150,000 people.
Yeah, it's funny you say that.
I was talking to an MP, Tory MP, who's been around for a really long time in Parliament, and he was saying, I think our party has got too used to the really quick cycle of things changing.
If you think about just the last five years, everything has changed on a kind of year and a half, maybe even two years.
And it's almost like the party's got so addicted to that cycle that they just need to shake everything.
When you're Rishi Sunak, you might think, you know what?
All right.
All right, Ms. Truss.
Off you go then.
You're going to have a nightmare two years, right?
The war is going to get worse before it gets better.
The pandemic is by no means over.
You've got the worst financial crisis we've had, probably in living memory.
You add all those things up.
This could be the worst hospital pass that any prime minister has ever had to inherit.
And you could do that.
And then who comes out after the election when she gets a drubbing, say, from Keir Starmer?
Which may or may not happen.
But if that happens, in sales, Rishi is the saviour.
So it might be a good one to lose.
Oh, I don't know.
I mean, no one ever really wants to be leader of the opposition as opposed to being prime minister.
I imagine that if he's in a time like this, I think I'd rather be dead with opposition.
There are some Tories who are saying, actually, we could do with a spell and opposition.
That's exactly what they need, by the way.
But they're going to be out for a long time, I think.
So I don't imagine that happens.
By the way, you know, I was talking up Liz Truss big time, but I mean, don't underestimate how rough around the edges that campaign is relative to Rishi's incredibly smooth machine, which is packed full of people.
I've got to say, I had a long chat with him at Law's Cricket Ground last year.
Very pleasant.
And he was really like, it was a group of people.
He was very effortlessly charming, very direct.
If you asked him a question, he gave you a straight answer.
What I love most of all, he goes and does cricket nets at the oval with his son.
And I said to him, are you a defensive prodder?
I imagine you are.
He went, absolutely not.
I'm a front-foot, aggressive, attacking bass.
Okay, there's a bit of flair in there.
But more importantly, he was a Goldman Sachs.
This guy's got an amazing brain for the economy.
I look at Liz Trust and I think, yeah, you're ticking all those boxes.
You're kind of thatcherite.
I get it.
I can see why the members might like it.
But I'm also thinking, have you got what it takes to get this country out of this massive economic mess?
And a lot of smart economic people think cutting taxes right now would be a disaster.
I think that's why this contest is still wide open.
I know it's sort of going in her direction at the moment.
But let's just remember the members so far, they went for Penny Mordens.
Then they switched to Kemmy, and now they're on Truss.
And Sunak's always been there, you know, at the bottom.
He may be the one that comes out at the end.
Because I don't claim to really understand the Tory party anymore, but I do know that the Tory members are mostly who are voting on this are mostly based in the southeast.
And most of them do tend to be centrists.
Yes, they go to the right, but there is a very real danger that Liz, who has now adopted the sort of far right of the party and is now talking up, oh, don't listen to economists, don't listen to the establishment.
I've got this brave new plan, which apparently no economist or any chancellor could possibly have thought of in the last 20 years, which is cut taxes growth.
Boom.
I mean, it sounds like rubbish.
It's going to work.
It is going to be rubbish.
It's not another gamble to take the nation's finances.
Let's take a short break.
You never know.
They might come back and say, actually, Rishi's still the one talking sense.
They might.
Welcome back to Piers' Angels.
All right, all right, all right.
Well, you're denying being angelic.
Trusting Social Media Over BBC 00:05:22
What's the matter with you?
We are not angel angels.
It's a complex one.
That's the problem.
It's actually, it's Trey's descriptions was the issue there, not potential offence.
Right, let's talk about the BBC because, Isabel, another scandal, you know, coming off Savile and all these things, you've done the BBC really caught with its trousers down on this, where you have Martin Bashir, their king interviewer with the greatest scoop of all time, the Dinah interview, which led to all the consequences, being exposed as a complete charlatan who just used fake documents to try and create an atmosphere of paranoia around her.
And Natiguelo Burke being paid off by the BBC.
I'm just thinking, if a tap would have done this, I mean, A, the editor would have resigned or been sacked, as would other senior executives.
And the BBC would have been all in it.
Would have led the charge.
But isn't it quite delicious in a way to see this sanctimonious institution actually having to admit that it was guilty of things that were as bad or quite fantastically much worse than many of the things that the tabloids were doing?
Should they be prosecuted, some of the BBC management who were involved, and indeed Martin Bashir, as Earl Spencer says.
So I'm not actually in favour of that.
I think that the BBC apology today was utterly humiliating.
Why should some journalists have gone to jail for phone hacking?
But Martin Bashir, if it's all true, as we believe it now is, remains at liberty without any prosecution of what he did.
Well, that's a good question.
I mean, I don't think we should get into the phone hacking here because that's a whole other story.
I'm not equating.
I'm just saying journalists have been put in prison.
They have been.
And the BBC would have been all over that like a rash.
I don't feel now that there would be much to be gained from prosecutions.
Clearly, the BBC would never ever allow any of what happened then to happen.
They said that after Savile, it turns out this was all going on too.
Kate, interesting thing on the back of this, fascinating survey came out today saying that the top news source in the country now for teenagers, Instagram, number two, TikTok.
This is for news.
Number three, YouTube for ITV, my former employer.
And the BBC wants the great bastion of trusted news for everybody languishing at number five.
I don't think these things are not linked.
I think they're linked.
I think there's been a breakdown in trust in the BBC and young people are now gravitating to social media.
No, I think you're exactly right.
And I think, you know, this story about Martin Bashir is the start of something that's been happening for quite a long time.
But actually, I think it's been accelerated by COVID, the coverage of COVID-19, because, you know, you were broadcasting, I was broadcasting during that period.
So much of the abuse on Twitter was, we don't believe you.
Why should we trust you?
You're trying to sell us a vaccine.
I'm not trying to sell you anything.
I'm reporting the news.
But it's become so twisted that people don't want to trust you anymore.
And the fact that people are getting their news from TikTok shows you that they want to remove that layer, that sort of edifice, if you like.
And that's why it's so important, you know, to be on Twitter, to be on YouTube and to give people.
I mean, we know with our show that we have sometimes a lot more people watching in other ways than watch conventional television.
It's been fascinating on YouTube, on the app, on the various social media platforms.
Really interesting to know.
It's a sea change.
My son's in their 20s.
None of them really watch TV.
They watch stuff in other ways.
But I think that's why it's important not to come down too hard on the BBC or any of the big broadcasters, actually, because you still need those big news organisations with their blue ticks and their verifications to be reporting the facts.
Because as we know, the big thing that we really need to counteract consistently is fake news.
It's a very, very interesting thing.
So when the BBC behaves like it did over the Savile scandal and over the Bashir Dinah scandal, that trust gets taken down.
It does.
But that's why they've apologised and they've paid out.
And I do also think these things, for a lot of teenagers, by the way, were a long time ago.
I don't think that's about their behavior, about why they're on TikTok.
It's because they're on TikTok.
Well, I mean, trust is about, is basically the BBC's core offer, isn't it?
And if it can't be trusted, what's the point?
But the other point I would make is I don't think young people are necessarily choosing these mediums because they're trustworthy.
It's because they're fast and they're entertaining.
And they're on them.
And the BBC is not always quick enough with stuff.
That's true.
But I know, for instance, an actor friend of mine, middle boy, he's an actor, he does TikTok video explainers, 45, 50 second explain, to music.
Big fashion.
And they're all completely factual.
They're getting 10 million views these days.
It's incredible.
And that's the kind of way that young people are getting their information.
I was talking about Joe Biden.
Joe Biden has COVID, which means he's apparently under White House rules.
Well, here is an announcement first.
Hey, folks, I guess you heard this morning I tested positive COVID.
But I've been double vaccinated, double boosted.
Symptoms are mild.
And I really appreciate your inquiries and your concerns.
But I'm doing well.
I'm getting a lot of work done.
I'm going to continue to get it done.
And in the meantime, thanks for your concern.
And keep the faith.
It's going to be okay.
I mean, he's now going into isolation until he tests negative.
There'll be a lot of people, including Democrats in America, hoping that takes a very long time because his presidency, according to laid his polls, Kate, absolutely in the cart.
His approval ratings are about as low as any president in modern times now.
Yeah, and I think yesterday, didn't he, accidentally say that he had cancer?
Yeah, well, he had had a formal skin cancer when he was young.
But he updated it.
But he updated it.
He updated it to make it sound like he still has it.
UK Leadership Crisis 00:01:38
I mean, it's gaffe after gaff after gaff.
Yeah, and I think he is like almost a dead man walking.
It's sad to watch.
Well, and sometimes falling off bikes, right?
And that's what concerns people.
Diplomatic bikes.
Even I don't do that.
And I think that's the problem, because this is the leader of the free world.
This is somebody who, especially as you said, in a time when we have a war in Ukraine, it's not just about Russia.
There are huge tectonic plates moving around China, too.
There needs to be steady leadership.
Lake, if you're PC in watching Biden at the moment, you're just licking your lips, aren't you?
The weakness of the leader of the free world.
Quick question about women's football, which I watched it last night, the women lionesses.
And I had a bit of fun on Twitter saying these were people who menstruate playing great football, which, of course, got me into terrible trouble.
I thought it was being ironic because I'm so sick of women not going to call themselves women.
They were brilliant last night.
The ability of this team now, compared to what it was even 10 years ago, they'd be better than the Arshaw first team the way they go.
You enjoy it?
No, I love it.
And also, as someone who, in my first newspaper job, took the sports team to task in conference once morning saying, by the way, you don't have a single women's sport in your pull-out sports section and you haven't for 30 whole days.
I think it's absolutely great that we have proved that football played by women is becoming a huge puller.
And becoming commercial.
And that's the key.
Big crowds, big money.
I want to leave this.
This is a fantastic pang, by the way.
I want to leave you with the favourite music, I think, which sums up tonight.
Piers Pang, which is the Charlie's Angels theme chief, which we're going to adapt to Piers' Angels.
Even if you don't see yourselves as angelic, I do.
So thank you, Angels.
We love it.
I keep it all centered out
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