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July 11, 2023 - Uncensored - Piers Morgan
46:42
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Transcriber: nvidia/parakeet-tdt-0.6b-v2, sat-12l-sm, and large-v3-turbo
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BBC Presenter Faces New Allegations 00:15:14
Tonight on Piers Morgan Uncensored in New York, damning new allegations about the sex scandal star at the BBC.
Now the presenter faces claims that he menaced a second young person and the BBC's top boss admits he still haven't even spoken to his star man.
Has the BBC turned a scandal into a full-blown crisis?
And is it time for the presenter to reveal his own identity?
Also tonight, his foul-mouthed tarades of media monster Logan Roy made him a global megastar in succession.
Actor Brian Cox has some Logan-esque views on the end of that show and the state of the world.
It's a brilliant interview and he joins me here in the studio.
Plus Hollywood actor Jonah Hill X League's intimate text messages and appeared to prove he's a misogynist, triggering a battle of a sexes in the court of public opinion.
Michaela Peterson joins me live to give her blistering verdict.
Live from New York, this is Piers Morgan uncensored.
Well good evening from New York and welcome to Piers Morgan Uncensored live from the Big Apple.
The more we learn about the scandal rocking the BBC, the murkier it gets.
Lawyers for the first alleged victim say the claims are rubbish.
The parents making those claims accuse the BBC of lying and they wonder how their child, who they say is a crack at it, can afford one of the most expensive legal firms in the country.
Now after last night's moralising rush to judgment about the son's reporting, damning new allegations have been made this time directly to BBC News.
A second young person aged in their early 20s says the married presenter contacted them on a dating app, pressured them into meeting in person, then sent menacing, abusive and expletive-laden texts when they threatened to speak out.
Well BBC News has confirmed the messages were sent from the presenter's phone.
The scandal feels like it's snowballing.
Undoubtedly more claims will be made possibly as soon as this evening.
And at the heart of this crisis are BBC leaders in total disarray.
It's now clear that the parents behind the first claim made a formal complaint on May the 19th to the BBC.
But only when the son put the claims to the BBC seven weeks later was the presenter even told about them.
And what about the BBC's so-called investigation?
Over the course of those seven weeks, the BBC attempted to contact the family just twice.
Once with the pro forma email saying we take your complaints seriously and once with a phone call which didn't even connect.
Well Director General Tim Davey who moved so quickly to suspend Gary Lineker for tweeting criticism of the government was hauled over the calls today by one of his own journalists.
The team saw them as serious allegations.
Okay which seems so weird as to why the presenter was only spoken to on the on July 6th.
Let's talk about that for a minute because I think that is a really important point which is if you've got an allegation coming into a corporate investigations team and I think you need to balance the concerns of duty of care, privacy, all those things I've talked about.
I don't think you take that complaint direct to a presenter.
If you just work that through, if anything that comes through or any call that hasn't been verified just gets bought in front of someone.
Yeah, but there were only two attempts made to contact the family, one by email, one by phone.
Does that seem fine to you?
I think one of the things I said today is I think that is a fair question.
Well it's a very fair question isn't it?
As is the question of whether Tim Davey is up to the task of running the BBC.
Incredibly he's still not met or even spoken to his star presenter at the heart of this scandal which is decimating the reputation of the entire BBC.
And he seems determined to fight fire with frankly what sounds often like David Brent style management psycho babble.
Well sure the B. I've given a bit of context to a few people in terms of the numbers of issues we get coming into our corporate investigations unit.
Over six months, that would be about 250.
And you take those, and they are the serious complaints that are coming through of all different types.
And what happens is we have an outstanding corporate investigations team.
They're very experienced.
Really?
Outstanding?
Seven weeks and did nothing?
The BBC gets a lot of complaints.
Nobody questions that.
It's a big company.
But how many of those complaints were as serious as this one about one of the BBC's most famous presenters who's alleged to have paid £35,000 over three years for sexual images to a young person, perhaps criminally?
We don't know yet.
Beginning, it said, when he was 17.
At the same time, his explosive claim was festering the BBC's filing cabinets.
It was providing viewers with breathless wall-to-wall coverage of Philip Schofield's demise at ITV, another very famous male presenter accused of an inappropriate relationship with a younger male colleague.
How could they not see the severity of the allegations and the urgency they demanded?
Why did it take the Sun newspapers reporting of the parents' claims for them to finally get to work?
How can the public have any faith that the BBC will handle these shocking new claims properly?
And while this crisis rages on, the BBC and the presenter involved are still leaving other male stars to defend their own reputations.
Presenters like Gary Lunica, Ryan Clark, and Jeremy Vine have all been disgracefully smeared and defamed by armchair detectives who don't understand the devastating impact it has.
Nikki Campbell addressed this head on.
It was a distressing weekend.
I can't deny it for me and others falsely named.
Today, I'm having further conversations with the police in terms of malicious communication and with lawyers in terms of defamation.
The situation is clearly untenable.
Every journalist and politician in Britain knows exactly who his presenter is.
Increasingly, members of the public know who it is because of the way social media behaves these days.
And more of them will work it out by the minute.
If you take a major star off air without warning, viewers will notice.
Now, I don't know if the presenter has broken any laws.
I do know his name.
There are very good legal and ethical reasons why I'm not saying it like everybody else.
But it's only a matter of time before he loses agency in this situation and somebody blurts out in Parliament or on a less responsible network.
For the good of his colleagues, the BBC and himself and his reputation, it's surely time for that presenter to reveal his own identity and to vow to clear his name and defend himself if that's what he can do.
Well, joining me now is former Conservative MP Louise Mensch here in New York with me, former BBC head of ethics, Akil Ahmed, and Times radio host and former BBC broadcaster John Pinar.
All right, John Pinar, you've been BBC man for so long.
What do you make of this?
I mean, yesterday it seemed to be a squabble over the veracity.
Today, this bombshell development of the BBC themselves getting their own separate complaint from a second individual about this star presenter.
Where do you see this story going?
Well, look, on the basis of what we've seen, and all I know is what we have all seen, is it feels like we are at something like a tipping point.
The situation yesterday, it looked messy enough.
It was clearly perilous for the presenter.
It was clearly embarrassing for the BBC.
And we heard the director general of the BBC saying today in an interview and at that briefing earlier on that this was damaging to the BBC.
Well, how could he say really anything else?
We had a situation where allegations have been made.
They were disputed.
They were disputed firmly, although very, very vaguely, but a conflict of evidence.
And now we have something more.
Just something, having something more, I think, begins to take the story into a different dimension.
Another young person alleging effectively abusive, abusive conduct, expletive-laden emails in pursuit of an attempt to date this young person using a dating app.
It gets more and more messing and reflects more and more, I think, damagingly on the presenter, depending, according to the account that we've seen so far.
Stress again, we don't know the ins and outs, we as mere onlookers, of what went on here fully behind the scenes.
But it begins to feel like a tipping point, and who knows what comes next.
I mean, John, you know a lot of senior people at the BBC.
What is the mood like there, do you think, amongst other BBC presenters?
It's the general mood that this presenter at the centre of this should name himself and put this feeding frenzy to bed by actually coming out and talking about it openly as the person.
As peers are not there, I'm again going by what I see and read and what I read into what I'm seeing and reading.
And what I'm seeing and reading this evening again suggests to me that the situation is rather unraveling.
When you have Jeremy Vine, who is another nationally known broadcaster, calling publicly on this unnamed presenter to name himself.
Talking about the BBC being driven, I think the phrase was being driven down to its knees.
Discussing this in terms of chaos publicly, for goodness sake, on social media.
One high-profile presenter addressing another anonymous, high-profile BBC presenter.
The thing is coming apart at the scenes.
And that, I think, you can imagine, because I certainly do imagine, is just the tip of the iceberg.
Although I use the word iceberg ill-advisedly, it's a lot hotter than that, I imagine, at Broadcasting House.
Yeah.
Louise Mensch, I watched or listened to Tim Davies' interview on The World at One today, and it sort of asked more questions by the end than we got answers because, you know, he might be in a difficult position here.
But the idea that I think that the BBC took seven weeks from the moment when they were first told about these allegations by this family to even alert the presenter to this, allowing him to continue working.
But also that Tim Davies still hasn't even talked to this presenter, who's one of the most famous people in the country.
What is he waiting for?
I mean, that's surely everybody's question.
What is he waiting for?
Even to be fair to the presenter and allow him to clear his name, the boss of the corporation should be speaking to him and saying, what is your explanation for this, for these two complaints?
I would even dispute from your account that the BBC reached out to this family at all.
A standard email saying we take your complaint seriously is nothing more than a piece of corporate spam.
It's not really reached.
And a call that didn't connect.
And a call that didn't connect.
Yeah, right.
Okay.
Your call didn't connect on the 6th.
And then we hear from the BBC's timeline that their investigation remained open.
Well, I'm not Inspector Morse, but I don't know if many people would call it an investigation when you call the family once, don't get through, and then just give up.
I completely agree.
Let me bring in Akil Ahmed.
You were the former BBC head of ethics.
Clearly, there are lots of ethical issues here, but I think the public generally are pretty mystified about what's happened here.
Why, if such serious allegations are made against such a high-profile presenter, why would the BBC effectively do almost nothing for seven weeks until a newspaper decides to run a story?
Well, it's not that it did nothing, obviously.
I mean, the thing to remember is that the allegations, we don't actually know the nature of the allegations when they were first brought to the BBC.
We do know that there was a conversation, had a 29-minute conversation, and that was then escalated up to the situation where they were contacted.
Now, that's where we can have a real serious conversation at some point about whether or not those seven weeks were too long and how much time was spent.
But as Tim Davies said earlier on today, 250 or so complaints, serious complaints that are investigated in a six-month period.
That's a lot of investigation and a lot of people.
So there's not one person just working on this and sitting there with their feet up on the table.
They're probably looking after lots of things.
But I do believe we do need, there will need to be an investigation looking at that timeframe.
And I think Tim Davy has said that as well.
But with regards to the allegations themselves, and that we don't know if there's any illegality.
We know that there could possibly be, dependent on the age of the person involved.
But I think what you have to have is a process.
The process, we can argue whether the process was any good or not, but there is a process in play.
And Tim Davey, as the Director General, you know, he can have a conversation by all means, but he cannot be involved in the investigation.
Because if this gets to the extent where there are sanctions, which may be even as far as somebody losing their job, and then there is an appeal, he probably is going to be the person at that level who will have to hear the appeal.
So we have to have some honest conversation sometimes about process.
We don't, things can't just happen in a nanosecond like many people, I'm sure warriors on Twitter want it to be.
But here's, okay, let me put this to you.
You know, for example, I remember Gary Enica when he did his tweet about refugees.
And, you know, that was dealt with unbelievably quickly.
So there's a tweet and bang, bang.
Well, you know, he suddenly suspended.
I mean, it only took about three nanoseconds.
Danny Baker.
Oh, I agree with you.
That was incorrect.
Danny Baker was taken off the airways in microseconds after he did a very unfortunate tweet.
You know, these people get treated instantaneously.
There's no great long investigations process.
Here you have incredibly serious allegations and the presenter that they're alleged against is allowed to carry on a very high-profile job representing the BBC.
A lot of BBC people I know are pretty incensed about that.
And for Tim Governor, the boss to say he's not an ongoing investigation.
You can argue whether or not the investigation was any good, but there was an investigation happening, which is very different to the Gary Lieberger.
I agree with you on Gary Lindica thing.
He should never have been taken off.
I can occasionally hear you.
You're just dropping out every now and then.
Akil, I'm sorry, we just lost you briefly there.
The point I was making was, I don't understand why the boss of the company wouldn't have at least had some conversation with such a high-profile presenter about such serious allegations before now.
And he still hasn't.
It seems extraordinary to me and I would imagine to most of the public.
It probably does, but it depends on whether or not there's going to be an investment.
It depends on the investigation, though, Piers.
That's the problem.
Because if you are actually going to be investigated and actually, if you find this person guilty of something and then that person appeals, who's going to hear the appeal?
And actually, at the level that the conversation has been had with, we are told, with the individual, that it probably would be the Director General who may be the person who has to hear that appeal.
So you have to keep yourself away from the direct conversation.
It feels weird and it's probably not what Tim Davey wants to do, to be honest with you, but it's probably what he's being advised.
And I've been in that situation and it's frustrating for him.
I know it will be.
I mean, Louise, the BBC has been at the centre of so many scandals recently.
The thing also that I think about this one is that all this was going on for the middle of May, right at the time the BBC was reporting extensively on the Philip Schofield scandal over at the rival network ITV.
And you would imagine that they would all be much more aware and heightened awareness of any potential incidents like that in their own building that had to be dealt with.
Well, here was a massive one brought to the table that they've just done nothing about.
Irony of Delayed Investigation 00:02:15
I completely agree.
And you have to say which young person matters when it's a young person that's allegedly being put upon by an ITV presenter or some other channel's presenter.
Then we're going to cover it to excess.
But when it's one of our own, when it's one of our own, and there's a lot of allegations in the press that this man is well liked at the BBC, that he is friends with a lot of senior management and this may have influenced how it's been dealt with.
I mean, I can't really agree with what's just been said because after all, Tim Davey said, uses words like, we have a duty of care to the presenter.
About the duty of care to this family who are desperate for your help with a clearly vulnerable young person who may or may not have been under the age of 18.
Also, I think the BBC is giving the impression by saying, Oh, we only just got told that it might have been under 17, the family denies that.
The BBC is giving us the impression that it will only look at its presenters if they commit a criminal offence when it's young people involved.
There's no ethical consideration here, just was it criminal or was it not criminal?
Most people in this country are going to think that people that we look up to have a duty of care that goes beyond simply don't commit crime.
And also, this second story, which is not from the Sun, but has actually been reported by BBC News investigating their own presenter in the middle of their own scandal.
They've now revealed a second story involving a second person, which may well indeed pass the threshold of a crime.
So, there's an irony there that this may not have started with necessarily.
I mean, the Sun never said it was a crime, by the way, to be completely upfront about what the Sun did.
It was actually, I think, the Sunday Times, when they reported it, who pointed out if the boy was, if the person at the centre of his was 17, that there may be a potential crime.
Yes, well, I think if the BBC had bothered to really speak to and follow up the first complaint, and if they had, in fact, gone to the presenter and asked them for his side of the story and said, Are there any more of these out there?
They might have had a heads up on the phenomenal story that's just broken tonight, which is that a young person in their early 20s is accusing the same presenter of abuse, of threats, of harassment.
There's never just one mouse, Piers.
There's never just one mouse.
No, and I hear there may be more revelations coming later tonight, and I'll keep an eye on that.
Louise, great to talk to you.
Akhil Ahmed, thank you very much, John Pinar.
Thank you very much.
Succession: Logan Roy in Real Life 00:07:43
We're on Senator next tonight, Logan Roy in real life, Brian Cox, joins me for what is a truly great laugh out loud interview.
You're not going to want to miss this.
Stay with us.
Welcome back to Petersburg Uncensored, live from New York City.
You're looking at Times Square there.
And earlier, I had the fantastic Brian Cox in here.
Now, you may remember that Logan Roy's tongue-lashings in succession made Brian a global superstar.
He's the Titanic mogul, of course, with a glittering career who put the worlds to rights and scares the living daylights out of his enemies.
And his character in the show is quite something too.
Well, Brian, join me, like I say earlier, for riveting one-on-one.
It was absolutely hilarious and full of his, well, extremely uncensored opinions on the hit show, on his career, on politics, on family, on death, on just about everything.
Here's Brian Cox, uncensored.
Brian, great to see you here in New York.
You have a play C, you spent a lot of time here.
Well, my boys are here.
They're American.
That's what they have to be.
My youngest is currently in Thailand and is about to go to Emerson College.
And my eldest of the second family, he's at the Atlantic Theatre School and he's now directing a project for the summer.
So my wife's here.
But I'm about to go back to England because I'm going to be doing work for me.
With your kids, have you got the succession sorted?
Yes.
They get nothing.
The one thing I've learned is don't give them anything.
It's quite interesting, actually, because that's become quite a debate where a lot of people take a view, give the kids nothing, others take a view, give them something, others spoil them ridiculously.
How have you actually been as a father in that regard?
I think I'm fair.
I think, you know, it's, you know, I've been a father at different financial stages of my life.
You know, I mean, there's a time when I was, you know, I had a very, my first wife was very smart with money, so I was quite good at that.
We're not so smart with money on this side, but we're doing much better.
I actually, on my WhatsApp chat with my three sons in their 20s, I often send them Logan Roy gifts as responses to their various observations about what I should be doing to help them.
It's very useful.
I love the way you say observation.
You mean their needs.
Yes.
Demands.
Demands, that's exactly.
Let me ask you, I mean, post-succession.
Is it a weird feeling when you come out of something that's so iconic, so successful?
Well, it is a bit weird.
I mean, the problem is that I can't go anywhere now.
I mean, I used to pride my anonymity, but it's gone.
Even here in New York, they sort of used to...
Oh, yeah.
I mean, I go wherever I go, somebody will come up and say, can I have a picture?
Or can you tell me you know what?
And I go, okay, you can...
And it's the best thing to say to somebody because in a way you mean it.
Is this the most famous you've ever been in your life?
Yeah, I think so.
And you like that?
I mean, is it intoxicating, but also a little bit intimidating?
It's a sort of, what is it?
How do I describe it?
It's a sort of...
It's all right, but it also sometimes gets a little bit overmuch.
I mean, you know, because people are so into the show.
I mean, it's just incredible.
It's kind of weird when I went to China.
I was in China recently.
And I thought, oh, this is great.
Nobody will know the show.
It lasted a day.
Really?
A day.
Even there, Logan Roy was nothing.
And suddenly, all these kids going, oh, hey, Roger Roy.
Sorry, does that sound...
I didn't mean that to someone.
No.
But you know what I mean.
And, you know, it was kind of strange.
And I thought, oh, God, you know.
But, I mean, people are always, I have to say, people are always very nice.
They're always very graceful.
You get the odd kind of bargey guy who comes in or says, can I have it?
And you go, no, cool.
And I've learned, the one thing I have to learn, and I've never been good at this, is saying no.
I've had to learn how to say no on occasion.
Where are your limits?
Well, my limits are when it just gets too much, you know, or when we're in a particular area, like getting off a plane and somebody says, can I?
And I'm going, well, there's a lot of other people.
If I start giving you, I know the world and his wife is going to start coming up and wanting a photograph.
And I'm never going to get to baggage.
The ending of succession, the final season.
I've got to be honest with you, when they killed you off, I was incredibly disappointed.
I thought it was...
You're not alone, Piers.
And I read then that you were.
Well, I was, I mean, I wasn't really disappointed.
I mean, I trust Jesse Armstrong implicitly.
And it's his decision.
And one had to go with his decision.
And that was fine.
I understood it.
I think personally it was a little quick.
I think they could have given up.
But I think they wanted that sudden impact, which is what it got in that amazing episode, which I never watched, by the way.
You've never seen it?
No.
Really?
Why?
The idea of watching myself dying on a plane is not merely my idea of fun.
It's not something I really want to take on board.
Oh, you know, I just watch myself die laughing.
So dramatic and so good.
And I was so overwhelmed by my debt.
Symbolics to that.
I know.
I mean, you just go, yeah.
And people kept, somebody was saying, did you watch the episode?
I said, no.
Why not?
It's a great episode.
I said, I'm sure it's a great episode, but there's no way that I'm going to watch myself an ear or a bit, even lying on a, you know, on a carpet on a plane.
Funny enough, I watched it and after that, the next few episodes, it began to lose me because you weren't there, because Logan Roy was no longer part of it.
I began to lose interest, and I tweeted to that effect and then got a whole maelstrom of response from people.
You'll probably hate this, but I got back into it when your coffin appeared in the funeral scene.
Yeah, yeah.
Because suddenly you were back.
And then, of course, there were some amazing performances, but the other characters were then responding because you were there again.
I felt that quite viscerally as a fan of the show.
Yeah, I mean, yeah, I was.
I mean, that was also a very funny thing that happened because they were worried about the funeral and they kept saying, you know, we don't want to give it away.
We've got to keep it in.
When it was over, really over and the last episode aired and that's the end of succession.
What were your honest feelings about that?
Well, my honest feelings is I was incredibly proud to be part of such an extraordinary show and really kind of groundbreaking in many ways because it's a satire and it's brilliantly written mainly by British writers who know how to do that thing of edge.
They get that sense of edge and certainly Jesse does.
United Kingdom Is Finished 00:07:52
And I trusted them completely.
I mean, one could quarrel and say, you know, it's all, I mean, there's all, you get all kinds of things which are stupid, like sense of, oh, I've been rejected because they're killing me off.
But of course, it's called succession.
Yes.
You know, he's got to go sometime.
Did he make it?
I hate to ask you this because it sounds a bit morbid, but when you go through your own death in a drama like that as an actor, does it make you think more about dying?
I've always thought about dying.
Yeah, I mean, you know, I lost my father when I was eight.
So death has always been kind of omnipresent in my life.
So I've lost, you know, my sister, my elder sister, just passed away in February.
So I'd experienced that.
And ironically, Logan's death is quite funny because I was never there.
How do you follow something like succession?
Christ knows.
You know, how do I follow something?
Is this what your bank managers ask you on a daily basis?
Exactly.
Exactly.
They're all going, and now what?
Could you imagine retiring?
Me?
Yes.
Never.
No, no, no, I don't believe in that.
No, I'll go on to I drop.
Would your dream be in mid-performance on a sort of wind down, I think, slowly.
I think eventually the dementia will get me.
I think I'll be...
And then it'll be nice to be able to say, well, I can't do it anymore.
I've got it.
I'm hoping that I can keep dementia at bay for a bit longer.
I'm still, you know, I'm not old.
You're spring chicken.
I'm a spring.
Look at me.
I look quite well from my age.
You do look very well, actually.
I know.
You do look very well.
I know.
I think I look amazing for my age.
How old are you now, if you don't mind me?
I'm 77.
Are you really?
Yeah.
You look great.
I know.
Well, I'm sensitive to next more from my interview with Brian Cox, and he's got some uncensored views on the state of the world on cancel culture, on trigger warnings, and who should be leading the Labour Party.
That's me.
Welcome back to Piers Morgan Uncensored live from New York.
Sixth Avenue for you, buzzing with activity at this time of the afternoon.
Well, now for my part two of my interview with actor Brian Cox, we discuss the future of British and American politics, including who he thinks should be the next leader of the Labour Party, and his thoughts on the race for the presidency here in the United States, plus his views on wokery.
Does it help with your anger management about global politics right now?
Yes.
It adds to it.
You know, it makes me more and more, it gives me somewhere to get my vent.
I mean, I shouldn't think it's difficult because both in the United States and in the UK, I mean, there's a lot of mayhem going down.
I would say there's a lot of crap going down, quite frankly.
I was going to use that word.
Let's talk about America first, but it does seem extraordinary that we're reaching a position where potentially the next election is Biden v. Trump again in a population of 320 million people.
Yeah.
It's all pretty horrible.
It's all pretty horrible, really.
And it's been really, I think living under that four years was such a strain.
I mean, it really was.
And we were here.
I mean, I'm convinced that's, I think Jesse and the writers got really exhausted by that.
You know, it was very interesting because on the first, our first read-through of the show, when we shot the first pilot, was the day that Trump was elected.
Was it really?
Yeah.
And everybody was going back to see Trump, well, to see Hillary elected, and I knew.
When you see Biden, he's only a little bit older than you.
I know.
When you see...
But he ran.
Yes, he did actually.
He can't anymore.
No, no.
He barely walked.
But I mean, when you see him, you know, falling over and tripping and all the verbal gaps and so on.
Like I say, I mean, you don't do that.
And you're 17.
No, it's so funny.
I was at the doctor's this morning and they kept saying, do you have to help yourself up when you start?
You know, are you able to...
How can you deal with the curb?
I was being asked these questions.
I said, I'm pumping big weights.
I can move a curve.
Let's turn to the UK.
You're going back to the UK to do this production in Bath and then moving to the West End.
We've had a nightmare, haven't we?
Boris Johnson, the chaos, Liz Truss, not outlasting a lettuce.
Rishi Sunak, certainly he's brought a little bit of decency back, I think, in terms of the way he conducts himself.
But the Tories seem in big trouble.
Nicola Sturgeon, of course, forced out in Scotland and then being arrested and so on.
Well, I think that's a bit of a witch hunt, quite honestly.
Do you?
I do.
I really do.
I think that she's been made a scapegoat.
There's something going on there, which is, you know, she's been arrested.
Why would she be arrested?
Well, in connection with the financial impropriety charges against her husband.
Yeah, but they were all dropped.
They lasted, you know, it was like after two hours, they were unarrested.
So why did they arrest him in the first one?
Why didn't they question them whether they're arresting them?
I mean, all of it's so dodgy, quite honestly.
I mean, you know.
Who would have it in to that degree, do you think?
It's hard to know.
It really is hard to know.
But I do think that there was a real worry about it, and especially the vulnerability of the Tories at the moment, but also the vulnerability of the Labour Party.
I mean, I know Kier Starmer doesn't want to have anything to do with independence.
Scottish independence, he really is absolutely gander.
But you see, I think what's interesting in the UK is the work that somebody like Andy Burnham has done in Manchester.
Yeah, yeah.
How that is really working and how those cities like Liverpool and Manchester are really, and all you have to do is join them up.
And suddenly you've got a kind of autonomous group that are really, you know, being incredible.
But...
Why is there such a paucity of leaders with a really fierce moral compass, a capability to bring people with them and to really affect change?
Well I think the problem is that they get marginalised.
I mean I think Andy Burnham is a case in point.
To me he's the perfect leader of the Labour Party.
Should be, no question.
Are you a cricket fan, bro?
I admire it, but I'm Scottish.
I know.
So who do you want to win out of England and Australia?
Oh, I like England to win.
Brilliant.
All the Scots wanted whoever beat you.
No, no, no, no.
There's this idea that we...
I mean, I'm an anglophile.
You see, my view, Piers, is I don't want to see...
I mean, I love England.
I love the United Kingdom.
And in a way, when you look at it, you look at the map and you see, you know, you see Scotland, England, Wales, Ireland, Northern Ireland.
And I've always thought that really what we need is not a United Kingdom.
We need a united federation.
We need a situation where each country is autonomous and they come together as a group so that we have to understand our reality.
But at the same time, we want to be independent.
We want to make decisions for ourselves.
We're grown-ups.
And I think the United Kingdom, to me, is finished.
There were a few stories recently where I actually immediately thought of you and thought I could almost hear the steam coming out of your ears.
One was that there's a new theatre production of the sound of music where there are literally warnings to audiences because they say the musical touches on Nazi Germany and the annexation of Austria, that an audience now has to be warned about the sound of music.
Women, Sports, and Pageants 00:12:37
Well, this is what I mean.
This is what I can't stand.
I can't stand the way we want to rewrite history.
I can't stand the way we don't want to acknowledge history.
And it's so important to acknowledge what our history is because that defines who we are and where we've got to.
And without acknowledging history, we are screwed.
You're well and truly screwed.
And I think we've not done that nearly enough.
But all these trigger warnings that people want to put now on art, whether it's books, poetry, films, theatre productions, whatever it may be, when do we get so sensitive, so overly offended?
Are we?
Or is it other people deciding we ought to be?
I think it really is about other people deciding we ought to be.
I don't think we are.
I don't know anyone who goes to sound of music who needs to be told, by the way, there are references to Nazi Germany.
That's ridiculous.
I find that, I don't know where that's coming from.
I really don't.
I want to know who's making those.
I think it's a small number of people.
It gets whipped up by a sort of very woke mob on social media.
Before we know it, this becomes standard practice.
Then you start seeing all the books having great chunks rewritten.
Well, you know, we had the whole thing with Roll Dahl, you know, which is disgraceful.
It's ridiculous, isn't it?
Absolutely disgraceful.
I mean, Roaldah is a, you know, he was a difficult man, but he wrote some amazing stuff.
But if the criteria for cancelling people or revisiting everything they do was being difficult, you would wipe out almost every artist of any note in history.
Yeah, they're all a bit difficult.
Exactly.
Charles Dickens, boom, boom, gone.
And, you know, and you go, it's not on.
It's just simply not on.
And it's the, you see, it also comes from complete ignorance.
It's an ignorant state that creates this sort of, oh, that's bad, that's good.
Yeah, I mean, it's ridiculous to say.
Of course, you know, that's what happened.
Michael Sheen recently said he says that non-Welsh actors playing Welsh characters he found hard to accept.
What do you think of that?
Well, it depends.
I don't find it hard to accept.
They can do the work.
I mean, I played Nye Bevan.
You know, I played Nye Bevan.
I'm a Scot.
I played a Welshman.
How was your Welsh accent?
Very good.
Can we have a...
No, I'm not going to do that.
I'm not a performing monkey.
Come on, Brian.
Look you.
I don't agree with Michael Sheen.
And I don't believe, you know, I don't believe in having a non-I mean, if a Scottish person, if a non-Scottish person can do the Scottish thing, I'll buy it.
So if I was to suddenly take up acting and play William Wallace, you'd be fine with that.
If you were any good.
I mean, if you were shit, I would certainly.
On that bombshell.
Brian, great to catch up with you.
Lovely to talk.
Really, I really appreciate it.
And best of luck with your productions back in the UK.
Good to see you.
Thank you.
If only they were all like Brian Cox.
You can watch the full uncensored interview with Brian on the Piers Morgan Uncensored YouTube page from now.
Well, uncensored next tonight, Michaela Peterson joins the Piers Pack to pass judgment on what's been called Jonah Hill's emotionally abusive text to his former wife.
It's Battle of the Exes next.
Welcome back to Piers Morgan Uncensored live from New York City, where I have a stellar Piers Pack right with me, a super PAC, you might call it.
In fact, I'm joined by podcast host and influencer Michaela Peterson, Fox News contributor Kat Timp, and Fox Nation host Tyrus.
Welcome to all of you.
I feel almost glittered by the stardust that's around me.
But first, some breaking news, just coming in on that story that we started at the top of the show with.
The BBC star suspended over these sex claims has now been accused in a new report by The Sun, which broke the original story, of breaking the law by defying the third national lockdown to meet a young stranger from a dating site.
Apparently, allegedly ignored strict COVID rules, even though his own network was, of course, providing round-the-clock coverage of the pandemic.
So that's just broken on the Sun newspaper website.
So that will clearly take this story into a whole new dimension.
Well, right, let's start with this pack.
Now, this story fascinates me.
Jonah Hill emotionally abusing his ex, Sarah Brady.
Michaela, welcome to Piers Morgan Uncensored, first of all, as a newbie.
I thought what I've read, I mean, Sarah Brady seems to be relentlessly posting all their old text message exchanges, which I just don't think is on anyway.
One.
Secondly, when I've read them all, Jonah Hill's perfectly entitled to just lay down some boundaries, isn't he?
And if she doesn't want to go along with it, well, fine.
And she clearly didn't really.
So they spit up and that's it and they move on, but she won't move on.
And now I'm once to shame him.
Why?
Well, when I first read the text, I thought maybe Jonah Hill was being unreasonable because if you're going to date a surfer and they put up swimsuit photos, you can't be that shocked by it.
But that was before I knew that it was a year and a half later.
He's just had a kid with his girlfriend.
So I would just say she's looking for attention, obviously.
So he was probably right about the swimsuit photos in the first place, being irritated by them because it was probably for attention given she won't give it up now.
But Kat, I mean, why are we reading all this?
I mean, they spit up.
He's met someone else.
He's become a father with somebody else.
I read them.
They're not like abusive, abusive.
It's just him saying, I would prefer you don't do this.
This kind of conversation goes on in every relationship, doesn't it?
Yeah, I feel like now everything has to be some specific therapy word and that side or another.
He maybe was, I think he was being kind of a jerk in that conversation.
Don't start dating a surfer if you're not comfortable with these things.
But also, yes, yes, and she's clearly looking for attention because she keeps posting more and more things.
She's cringe-making.
And none of us, I don't care who you are, none of us would look awesome based on our worst text we've ever seen.
I mean, I would, but Cyrus, nobody wants to see their dirty linen airing on Instagram stories minute by minute.
She's posting this stuff all day long.
Oh, to be fair, she's posting excerpts of the text.
She's not posting her stuff.
Because typically, since she wants to use big words like abuse, because abuse has changed a lot, because I need to call some of my football coaches and have to bring them on this show because they didn't talk to me that way about boundaries.
And if you don't like it, do it my way.
They use cuss words and stuff.
So the sensitivity of this is basically just, she's just coming off looking really thirsty.
I mean, she says in one of the posts, this is a woman.
This is not abuse.
She said, this is a warning to all girls.
If your partner's talking to you like this, make an exit plan.
Love you all.
Call me if you need an ear.
Well, he made the exit plan.
He gave her boundaries.
But let's, here's the thing.
In the argument about the, she's a surfer.
Okay, but surfers usually wear a wetsuit when they surf competitively.
She was taking pictures and Kat did this great, she did this great prank on social media where she took a picture with a black box by where her butt was.
And then when you swiped it, it was an even bigger black box.
But there was no black box with her.
That's the only bathing suit photo that I have on the internet is covered.
We're talking about bathing suits.
Let's talk about Miss Netherlands.
So at the weekend, Ricky Valerie Coley, who was a transgender entrant to Miss Netherlands competition, won the title.
So a biological male has been voted Miss Netherlands and will now take part in Miss Universe.
Michaela, your thoughts?
I hope he wins Miss Universe.
I'm kidding.
I'm kidding.
I don't even know how to react to these situations because women fought so hard to get where we are today.
I was just looking at the picture of the Boston Marathon runner in 1967, and it's this woman and she's being grabbed by men on the track because women weren't allowed to compete.
That's where it started.
And now we're here and there are men competing in our sports.
And I have no idea how feminism came fully.
It's so bizarre.
And Kat, I mean, only yesterday, Megan Rapino, one of the great female sports stars in American history, came out on, as she retired, this might be convenient timing because it won't apply to her.
And so, I'd be very happy if trans athlete sports women come and play in the American women's team.
Well, fine, but what happens if they're all 11 biological males representing the American women's team?
I mean, this can't be right, surely.
I think what's even worse is people saying that if you have some issue with a biological male competing in sports, then the only reason for that is that you're transphobic and not the research that you can point to that shows that someone who's gone through male puberty could have various advantages over a biological woman in these activities, in these sports.
It's not a zero-sum game when it's these conversations.
There's scholarships, there's different things on the line there.
And I think that that really just taints the whole entire issue.
When it comes to pageants, I do want to get on the record that I think pageants are lame.
Right.
I mean, that could be a perfectly reasonable argument that they're all lame.
But Tyrus, you know, it seems to me like every aspect of womanhood is, for want of a better phrase, under attack from the trans lobby that basically want to have their rights superseding women's rights to just be competing against other females.
Now, to be fair, my opinion is going to be skewed because I am, I do identify as a phobic.
So I am phobic on everything.
So the idea that, and this, what does it say about women that a man can just switch and be a woman and inside of six months win everything?
So, you know, where are the feminists?
Turns out the feminists are the alpha males because we're the only ones complaining about this.
Right.
And I think it's whenever you always have to follow the money.
Whenever somebody comes out and says, I think this, and it doesn't make sense with the soccer player, she, I guarantee you, if a trans man took her job, that would not be the conversation.
Oh, it may have.
You know, and it's just like the same thing with the equal pay thing.
When you do the math, they actually were making more than the men.
So it just goes back to narratives.
They say things.
There's no way, I don't care what makeup, hair, or whatever, that any man who transitions is going to be more beautiful than a woman.
It's just not.
Pageants, the scholarships, the modeling jobs that go with it is political.
You can't tell me like that, and I don't know that person can be the nicest person in the world, but there's no way that is the best way to do it.
It's also a friend of a woman.
Also, when Megan Rapino talks about this, she likes to position herself as all about equality.
She fought a very good campaign for the women players to be paid the same as the men.
Great.
Okay, they get big audiences.
They're world champions.
I can sign up to that.
But what's equal about allowing people with an obvious physical advantage to come in and decimate women's sport?
It's not equal.
So you can be all about equality right to the point you say this stuff, then you're not about equality.
Talking of equal, Kat, and we don't know the answer to this question, but Elon Musk has challenged Mark Zuckerberg not just to a cage fight, but he's now up to the ante.
He said, Zuck is a cook.
Cuck.
It means a cuck, is it?
He tweeted Sunday night.
I propose a literal dick measuring contest.
Yeah.
I mean, that's bold.
Both of you.
Speaking of differences and gender, women don't do this.
Women are never like in a business dispute and they're like, oh, yeah, we'll pull your pants down because what I got going on is better than you.
This is just him being a bro.
You know, I don't think they ever actually fight in a cage match.
I think that Elon Musk is having a little bit of fun with this.
And I don't think they ever actually do it.
Michaela, what do you make of this whole threads thing?
100 million people have signed up in the space of a few days.
I mean, Mark Zuckerberg is taking the challenge to Elon Musk.
Is Elon Musk in trouble with Twitter, do you think?
So 100 million people signed up in a few days, but there's 2.35 billion people on Instagram.
I don't know if that type of conversion at like 5% is something to be that proud of.
And I've been on the platform and compare.
I don't think it's as interesting.
I guess that would be the nice way of saying it.
I don't think it's as interesting as Twitter.
Well, also, Taurus, I mean, Zuckerberg's trying to make it going to be a place for nice conversation.
There is no social media platform that's nice.
Zuckerberg vs Musk on Twitter 00:00:58
They're all vile, aren't they?
All of them.
Even Facebook is a bit more valuable.
Or it's too like lotion in the basket type nice in the other direction.
I would like to argue: no, women don't pull them out and put them on the table, so to speak.
But they're always judging each other by the way they're dressed and talking about outfits and look at her behind their back.
Yeah, but then they'll be like, look at her shoes.
To be fair, I don't think so.
Like they're vicious.
Then they'll actually get to the business.
No one's going to pay money to see Zuck and Elon.
No, no, I would.
I absolutely would.
I'll see the entrance.
I'll see the entrance.
I'm telling you right now, stage fright, lights, it would be a lot of fun.
I would pay a lot of money for that.
I wouldn't pay as much money as I would pay currently to see Captain Fontor, which starts next week.
Oh, yeah.
I'm announcing even more dates on Thursday.
How many dates are you doing?
30.
I'm going to go back to the next one.
And because your book is a massive bestseller, the tour is going to be a huge hit.
I'm honored to still have you on the show.
Of course.
Thank you.
Thank you, Taurus.
Thank you, Michelle.
Lovely to see you.
That's it from me.
Keep it uncensored.
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