MONDAY, JULY 30
Speaking to Melania Trump aboard Air Force One recently, I told her I empathised with her tricky First Lady role because a friend of mine was once Britain’s equivalent. That friend, Sarah Brown, wife of ex-Prime Minister Gordon, was mystified when she read my report in The Mail On Sunday.
‘When did you become Mr Empathy?’ she emailed, adding: ‘At least you didn’t crash into her car or any other part of the giant motorcade at Stansted Airport.’
Ah. Yes. I once drove into the Brown Prime Ministerial limo right outside the No 10 door. The Downing Street cops that day just slowly shook their heads in withering contempt. A similar collision with Trump’s ‘Beast’ at Stansted would have ensured this column never appeared again.
Appeared on The Talk, an all-female Loose Women-style US panel show that stars my old sparring partner Sharon Osbourne
WEDNESDAY, AUGUST 1
Beverly Hills is the best place in the world for watching big stars struggle with normal life. Tonight I witnessed Demi Moore remonstrating with a malfunctioning parking meter for several increasingly enraged minutes as she morphed into GI Jane brawling with Master Chief. I nearly offered to help but feared for my safety.
THURSDAY, AUGUST 2
Appeared on The Talk, an all-female Loose Women-style US panel show that stars my old sparring partner Sharon Osbourne. Things are never quiet in Mrs O’s life, as I learned during our four years working together on America’s Got Talent, and today was no exception.
The Talk’s host, Julie Chen, has just seen her husband, CBS boss Les Moonves, embroiled in a huge #MeToo scandal. And overnight, news broke that Sharon’s son Jack was involved in a punch-up with his estranged wife’s new boyfriend.
Add increasing Trump and Brexit hysteria to the mix, and Sharon was in a heightened state of agitation. As I walked out, she rushed towards me, gripped my shoulders and screamed, ‘THE WHOLE WORLD’S GOING NUTS, PIERS!’ When Sharon Osbourne says that, we know there’s a problem.
FRIDAY, AUGUST 3
By ironically happy coincidence, David Hasselhoff, the third AGT judge with Sharon and me, has married for the third time, to Welsh model Hayley Roberts. The Hoff went through a dreadfully acrimonious divorce from second wife Pamela when I worked with him that culminated in a bitter squabble over various treasured possessions including a prosthetic French maid. ‘I should have married the maid,’ he told me wistfully at the time. ‘Would have saved a lot of trouble and money…’ He emailed me several weeks ago to say simply, ‘Miss our laughs.’
So do I. David is one of the world’s funniest people, if not always for entirely intentional reasons. He’s also got a massive heart and an unquenchable appetite for life. I wish him and Hayley all the best.
SATURDAY, AUGUST 4
Four years ago I was watching my youngest son play cricket for Wellington College in Berkshire. On a neighbouring pitch, a skinny 16-year-old kid was playing for the 1st XI, bowling fierce 85mph snorters and smashing sixes for fun. I had a chat with him after the game and he seemed a chirpy, charming and determined young man.
Since then we’ve stayed in touch via regular amusing tweets and texts. We also played golf together (with his mentor, cricket legend Allan Lamb) and he drove, putted and sledged me into dismal submission with a competitive spirit that made me look like a shy choirboy.
Today, Sam Curran, now 20, was named man of the match for a dazzling performance during England’s thrilling win over India. Sam’s eldest brother Tom, 23, plays with him for Surrey and England, and middle brother Ben, 22, is on the books at Northamptonshire – where their Zimbabwe-born father Kevin was once the overseas superstar.
Very sadly, Kevin died aged only 53 from heart failure while jogging, so missed seeing his lads light up the game he so loved. As I said to Sam tonight, I’m sure his dad is looking down and bursting with pride.
I know his mum Sarah will have also been watching proudly – and nervously! – because I often used to see her on the boundary at school. They’re a great family. Just don’t ever play golf with them.
SUNDAY, AUGUST 5
This week’s winner of ‘Most Hysterical Piers Morgan Basher’ goes to Owen Jones, the breathtakingly sanctimonious and vertically challenged pipsqueak columnist for a Left-wing paper.
Branding me a ‘preening, disgraced former newspaper editor reinvented as a fawning cheerleader for the Nazi-condoning, alleged sexual predator in the White House’, Jones said I ‘conducted a toadying interview’ with President Trump’s campaign guru Steve Bannon on Good Morning Britain.
In fact, my co-presenter Susanna Reid conducted most of the interview and repeatedly challenged Bannon in a very rigorous manner. For Jones to airbrush her out of the whole thing is grotesquely sexist and patronising. But I’d expect that from the hypocritical, obsessively virtue-signalling little halfwit.
What’s more indefensible is that his disingenuousness appeared under the headline: ‘The far Right is at its strongest since the 1930s, and the media is helping.’ ‘By way of contrast,’ Jones raged, ‘Morgan hectored and shouted over Left-wing Muslim writer Ash Sarkar.’
Ah yes, Ms Sarkar. She was the delightful young militant who shouted, ‘I’m literally a communist, you idiot!’ at me on GMB and became an overnight national heroine.
Days later, Jones was photographed on a park bench with Sarkar, giggling like a lovestruck schoolboy as he conducted his own obsequiously fawning interview, in which he swooned: ‘Communism is back, baby!’
It seems principled Mr Jones despises dangerous political extremists, unless they adhere to a hideously vile and oppressive far Left-wing ideology that has caused the murder of 100 million people.