Piers Morgan: In the eye of the storm

Piers Morgan, the Mirror editor sacked from his post earlier this year following the publication of hoax photographs, is in typically ebullient form as he speaks about his forthcoming memoir, sold to Ebury in a deal reported to be worth more than £1m. Heavy secrecy surrounds the contents of the book, for which serialisation negotiations are underway. "I was planning to do something to coincide with 10 years of editing the Mirror anyway. I thought, 'I'm going to be 40; most editors get to 65 and just when they're about to do their memoirs, they die.' I'm the right sort of age to really irritate my colleagues and have a bit of fun. "Eugenie Furniss came to me from the William Morris agency quite a few months before I got sacked. I did a 12,000 word proposal, and then I thought, 'Hang on a minute. How am I going to find time to write it?' The day I was sacked "When I got sacked, Eugenie spoke to me that afternoon and we said, 'What a great move for the book!' First, I had lots of time on my hands to write it, and second, it was going to be worth a lot more than it had been the day before. So as I was reading all the news of my shame, Eugenie and I were plotting the assault on the UK book market. "I spent the whole summer writing it, and I have to say, it's been tremendous fun reliving it all. I'm not like Alan Clark, I didn't go home every night and write a handwritten journal. I was a busy boy. "But at the end of each day, I used to keep everything--interesting letters or emails, taped interviews, or notes of a meeting with somebody such as the prime minister. It's part of my job to take notes of everything, and if you interview Victoria Beckham, you always keep the tape. "I also had all my work diaries, with every meeting in them. So t was very easy then to create a 'diary'. "Originally the book was 120,000 words but we've ended up with an awful lot more. I found it impossible to cut, so I gave it to Jake Lingwood [Ebury deputy publisher]' who found it equally impossible to cut, so we thought, 'Oh sod it, it's going to have to be a bigger book.' "What I went through was extraordinary; I was 28 when I became editor of the News of the World, and then I went to the Mirror, and for all that time I had a bizarre life of celebrities, tycoons, royals and politicians. I look back on that decade as one of the most extraordinary decades for news stories and for people, from Diana to Blair to Murdoch to Dunblane to 9/11. "The book isn't remotely bitter; it's not a Greg Dyke rant against the world. I don't want people to think, 'Oh God, Piers Morgan will be banging on about Iraq for 200 pages.' I think people will find the drama of the inside track of what happened when I was in the eye of the storm more interesting than if I just sat there and said, 'I shouldn't have been fired.' I felt there was a horrible inevitability about the way things unfurled and something had to give, and I certainly don't feel any bitterness towards the company. I had a great time, and if you've got to go, go with a bang.

I knew Princess Diana well "Half of the book is very funny, gossipy stuff about what it's like to work for Rupert Murdoch on a weekly basis, and have dinner with George Michael or Madonna, so if you like celebrity stuff there's loads of that. I got to know people such as Princess Diana very well. "Obviously there will be significant political content to this, and I imagine it will get them all hopping around a bit. I counted it up, and I had well over 50 one-to-one meetings with Tony Blair in 10 years, and a similar number with Gordon Brown and David Blunkett. "I've got a rather fractious relationship with Cherie Blair, but there's a nice little twist to the end of that tale which I won't ruin for you. It's rather amusing. "Tony Blair I had a very good relationship for a long time. We went through a lot of stuff together, in a weird way. I was editor for the entire time he was Labour leader, and then prime minister. You can see how the whole relationship fractures when we get to the difference of opinion over Iraq. Kiss and tell? "None of my friends or people I like doing business with have anything to fear at all. But if you don't fall into that category, I have had no compunction in settling lots of scores, because after all, why not? I've nothing to lose, have I? "I don't believe I've betrayed any genuine confidences and I don't want people thinking it's just a kiss and tell book. When people have seriously asked me not to put something in the newspaper and I've felt the consequence would be that it would cause unnecessary hurt and distress, I haven't put it in the paper and I certainly won't be putting it in the book. "But there were certain things that for whatever reason I couldn't put in the newspaper at the time, which I have no problem publishing now. I've thought them through quite carefully and I'm quite happy with them, so if people want to complain about kissing and telling, let them. "I think there is a lot of stuff that will make front page headlines, no question. I'm aware that I want to have a rattling good serialisation out of this and make a rattling good sum of money. I want to create mayhem and lots of headlines, and sell lots of books. And I will do whatever is required to do those things." Benedicte Page