She [Naomi Campbell] was breaking the law.”So who made Morgan god then? “All editors play god to a certain extent,” he says. “We have to weigh up what is and what isn’t fair.” He also tells me that anyone who flogs their wedding to Hello! or a christening to OK! magazine can’t expect their privacy to be respected to the same extent as anyone else. “The fame game is a kind of contract,” he says.His case is predicated on the inviolable right of tabloid newspaper editors to decide what should and shouldn’t be private and what forfeits of privacy a famous person makes. Campbell may not have been wise to seek counselling at a walk-in group in a fashionable part of London: but surely that’s her business. Here, surely, is the core of what Justice Morland was concerned about: the right to some confidentiality – even for the stupid or disingenuous Morgan shakes his head “There are ways of dealing with these things. When we confronted Kate Moss with something similar, she said: ‘Fair cop But please downgrade it to Kate’s been partying too hard’ That’s what we did.
Naomi made it much worse for herself by lying and then choosing a legal battle.”Can this be the same Piers Morgan who has boasted of ending copy approval by celebrity PRs because he was fed-up with the deal-making that enabled the famous to manipulate what was written about them? Moss plays ball, good; Campbell doesn’t, bad? “Oh, come off it,” he says “Some people want it all ways. They can’t have it because that would leave me producing dull papers. I won’t do that.”After 11 September, Morgan respositioned the Mirror as a more serious read. “I will never go back to the days when we ran front-page stories about soap opera characters or Big Brother.” He speaks as if the Piers Morgan who now prides himself on anti-war campaigning coverage of Afghanistan and Iraq is entirely separate from the one who has spent the previous years running the stories he now deems worthless.Kylie Minogue appears in the Mirror the morning after the court case making supportive noises about the Mirror in the Naomi case.
“A pleasure to do business with,” purrs Morgan.For some reason, I think of Mack the Knife Morgan’s teeth are very pearly white Much safer to have him as a friend than a foe. Biography: Piers Stefan Morgan 30 March 1965: Born to Glynne and Gabrielle Pughe-Morgan. Educated Chailey comprehensive and Lewes Priory sixth form college1985-87: Lloyd’s of London 1987-89: reporter, Surrey and South London Newspapers1987: joins The Sun; later showbusiness editor1991: marries Marion Shalloe, two sons1993: publishes Take That: On the Road, a biography of the group1994-95: editor, News of the World 1995: editor, The MirrorLow point: Rebuked in 2000 by Press Complaints Commission after alleged share-ramping, following investment in Viglen stocks, backed by The Mirror High point: March 2002, made editor of the year in the UK Press Awards for second consecutive year. A week ago today, Daniel Barenboim raised his baton to begin Wagner’s Flying Dutchman. By next Saturday evening, he will have spent 41 hours, spread across two weeks, conducting his Deutsche Staatsoper Berlin company in every one of the German composer’s 10 major stage works. So intense is the challenge set by Wagner’s operas that many conductors go through their career without performing one. No one has ever before attempted Barenboim’s task of conducting all of them in immediate succession.In most conductor’s hands, the idea would be dismissed as a gimmick.
A few years ago, Barenboim’s contemporary, Lorin Maazel, conducted the nine Beethoven symphonies in one day at London’s Festival Hall As an athletic challenge it had some merit As a musical event it was worthless. But such is Barenboim’s stature, and his personal integrity, that one knows that the only purpose to his venture is musical.
Barenboim’s Judaism and Israeli citizenship are at the core of his personality and have prompted many of the ventures that have taken him beyond the musical world and into a form of politics. So it is all the more remarkable that it is Wagner, above all other composers, with whom he is now associated. The German composer, who died in 1883, was, of course, Hitler’s favourite; his music sometimes accompanied Jews as they were sent to the gas chambers. But the current Wagnerthon in Berlin is merely Barenboim’s latest attempt to rehabilitate Wagner, especially in the eyes of his fellow Jews. As he puts it: “Wagner was not responsible for Auschwitz”.Barenboim is now the main conductor at Bayreuth, the annual festival in deepest Bavaria devoted to Wagner’s operas.
