4/11/2005|||111323937803747595||||||

MEET THE PRESS

A column looming, I’ve been trying to speed-read Piers Morgan’s diaries. Has anyone written a more depressing book about journalism? Perhaps there’ll be some redeeming factor in the final pages. I hope so anyway.

One minor episode among many. It’s 1994, and Morgan is the editor of the News of the World. A dubious character offers him Jonathan Ross’s laptop, which he claims to have "found" in a taxi. Morgan and his staff check the contents and find, alongside copious business details, a raunchy letter Ross has written to his wife. The seller wants £20,000 for the computer, but Morgan declines because Ross is "a kind of mate, and I want to hire him as our movie critic." So he buys the laptop for £3,000 and nobly hands it back to Ross on condition that he "confirmed to our readers that he sends his wife disgusting ‘love byte’ letters."

I never thought I'd ever feel sorry for Jonathan Ross.

The Guardian has news of a TV version. But where will the producers find an actor seedy enough to play the great editor?

|||Clive|||http://clivedavis.blogspot.com/2005/04/meet-press-column-looming-ive-been.html|||4/11/2005 06:09:00 pm|||||||||

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