There’s a new documentary on Jeremy Clarkson and the numerous scandals he’s been involved in, and it goes behind the scenes of when he got into that battle with Piers Morgan.
The Clarkson’s Farm host has been under fire for weeks after his hateful post on Meghan Markle became Ipso’s most complained-about article ever (Independent Press Standards Organisation).
After stating he was “mortified” by his comments that he “hated” the Duchess of Sussex “on a cellular level” and “dreamt” of her being “forced to march nude through the streets,” the Duke and Duchess of Sussex criticised his “habit of propagating hate language.”
The now 62-year-old has been in trouble on several occasions, but his confrontation with Morgan, then 57, at the British Press Awards in London in 2004 made headlines.
The new Channel 5 documentary Jeremy Clarkson: King Of Controversy details the history of the conflict between Clarkson and Morgan, then the editor of the Daily Mirror, which began in 2003 when Clarkson dumped a glass of water over Morgan’s head.
Ken Gibson, a former motoring editor at The Sun, remembers attending the event with Clarkson and sharing his experience on the show.
‘It was the British Press Awards, so the Oscars of the British media in London. Everyone was there, every editor, every top journalist, every top photographer,’ Gibson said.
‘Jeremy and I had been nominated for the – shortlisted for motoring journalist of the year, so we were sitting on The Sun table. Piers was there as editor of The Mirror.’
The documentary also featured the participation of broadcaster Jeremy Vine, who compared Clarkson and Morgan to “matter and antimatter.”
‘They’re both very, very big personalities, and when they collide, it’s going to go off,’ he said.
Gibson explained that The Daily Mirror had published some stories ‘which 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?”’
Then, archival footage of Clarkson’s interview with Michael Parkinson was broadcast, in which he described punching Morgan and said it was the first time he’d “ever hit anybody ever,” while also showing off his ‘busted’ finger.
A clip was also shown of Morgan at an Oxford Union Society talk in 2015, where he said: ‘My exact words when the third blow crunched into my head were, “Is that it? My three-year-old hits me harder than that”.’
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”.’
Ten years of animosity between the two hosts finally came to an end when Morgan admitted on camera that he and Clarkson had “made up” by getting “totally smashed” at Morgan’s neighbourhood bar.
After being punched “three times in the head” during the media awards event years prior, Morgan announced their reconciliation on Good Morning Britain in 2020: ‘We had a big night out at my local pub where we drank ourselves into oblivion and declared peace after a 10-year feud.’
Jeremy Clarkson: King Of Controversy airs tonight on Channel 5 and My5 at 9pm.