Piers Morgan has shared further details about the moment Jeremy Clarkson punched him in the face over 20 years ago.
At the 2004 British Press Awards, tensions were sky high between the pair and bubbled over when the Clarkson’s Farm star, 65, hit the former Good Morning Britain presenter, 60, square in the face, even breaking a finger in the process.
At the time Piers was editor of the Daily Mirror and published some pictures of Jeremy with a woman who was not his wife in 2002, despite the former Top Gear host allegedly asking him not to.
In his new book Woke Is Dead, as reported by the Daily Mail, Piers explained: ‘He ended up punching me before we settled things at the British Press Awards.
‘I’ve still got the scar on my forehead, and it wasn’t entirely unjustified, so I have no complaints about it, although I did think he had a very weak punch, and he did break his finger hitting my head, which is quite satisfying.’
However, the pair later reconciled, calling a truce. Piers said of their reconciliation: ‘He contacted me out of the blue and said “Morgan, Clarkson here, drink?”
‘We met in my local pub and actually had a great night.’
He added: ‘We got his daughter and one of my sons to act as the official peace treaty ratifiers and peace in our time was agreed.
‘I mean, we’re never going to be best buddies, but we now tolerate each other’s existence without wanting to punch each other, which I think is a major step forward.’
Writing for The Times in 2022, Jeremy recalled what happened on the night of the punch.
‘”Why’s your f****** wife looking at me like that?’ he [Piers Morgan] thundered.
‘So I punched him. And then I punched him again. And then I thought: “You know what? I don’t think this would ever get boring.”
‘So I punched him again. And, annoyingly, broke my finger.’
The pair’s first confrontation seemingly came in 2003, during Concorde’s last ever commercial flight, when Jeremy and Piers were sat next to each other, and the then-Top Gear host made his feelings known by pouring water over him.
Speaking on Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, Jeremy previously recalled: ‘I was on its last commercial flight they sat me next to the lavatory, or Piers Morgan as you know him.
‘I poured a glass of water over his crotch, so when he got off, it looked like he’d wet himself.’
By 2017, tensions had well and truly cooled, as Piers even snapped a photo of them together in Saint Tropez, and joked: ‘Bumped into an old mate in St Tropez last night… and we didn’t even punch each other.’
Threee years later in 2020 the pair even appeared on air together on ITV’s Who Wants To Be A Millionaire, when Piers took part in the show Jeremy presents as part of the Christmas special.
In the 2023 documentary Jeremy Clarkson: King Of Controversy, Ken Gibson, former motoring editor at The Sun, recalled being at the award ceremony with Jeremy when the fight broke out.
He explained stories in the Daily Mirror had ‘clearly caused a great deal of anguish among the Clarkson family’.
‘Jeremy went off to go to the loo, and I was walking just behind him, and then he bumped into Piers,’ he recollected.
‘Jeremy told Piers not to write about his family. He didn’t mind being criticised about work, or anything else. Piers more or less said that comes with the territory. They then followed a little session of finger prodding of each other’s chests, where they were asking, “What are you going to do about it?”’
Gibson said that in the moment, he tried to calm the situation, telling the rivals: ‘I actually just said to them, “See how many cameras there are? See how many journalists? You’re going to end up on the front pages for all of the reasons. You need to grow up and just go back to your seats now and sit down”.’
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