When the acid-tongued Brit Piers Morgan was asked to fake his own death by TV executives, he quite naturally said “Absolutely not!” But why were documentary makers so keen on killing the plummy presenter in the first place?
According to the Mirror , their former boss hog was approached by a flock of fiendish filmmakers hell-bent on perpetrating a Piers Morgan death hoax because they thought it would be a novel idea for a reality TV show.
By “Killing Piers” in a high-profile publicity stunt, the TV executives were hopeful to use the public reaction as a tool to measure the world’s reaction to the demise of such a divisive figure.
Piers himself explained modestly that, if he had given the green light to the elaborate death hoax, the public’s grief probably wouldn’t reach the dizzy heights of “Princess Diana-like scenes.”
“A few years ago someone wanted me to take part in a reality show where I would be filmed recording my own fake death and they would record the national outpouring of grief.
“They said, ‘obviously some people in your family would have to know it wasn’t real, maybe your mother’, I thought, ‘yeah and my kids maybe’.
“I told them, ‘I don’t think you’ll be seeing Princess Diana-like scenes if I die.’ It was an independent company who had approached Channel Four, who were very keen on the idea. It was going to be called Piers Morgan is dead.”
Piers, who has made his name fronting what seems like an endless charade of reality shows, has made something of a career of rubbing people up in a prickly manner.
Morgan’s loathe-him-or-loathe-him persona also led to another offer of appearing in a certain kind of TV show – one that involved him being attacked by Great White sharks.
“The other TV show I was offered, was one to lower me into the South African ocean in a tank and see me get attacked by Great Whites.”
It’s tempting to say the sharks got off lightly.
(Photo By Mike McGregor/Getty Images)
