Our country has been cleaved in two. Unable to reconcile their differences over this insurmountable matter, friendships have come to an abrupt halt and families have been permanently torn asunder. The nation is in disarray. Common ground is nowhere to be seen. And all because people can’t work out whether Piers Morgan or Richard Madeley is the more spectacularly weird Good Morning Britain host.
Sure, on the surface, Piers Morgan runs away with it. Ever since he debuted in 2015, Morgan has essentially treated the programme the same way your deaf grandfather treats an Amazon Echo, bellowing an impenetrable barrage of opinion and abuse at the top of his voice regardless of anything else that happens to be going on. Piers Morgan’s gone-to-seed Joffrey shtick is now so pronounced that his colleagues openly make hay with it, tweeting pictures of their own distant faraway stares whenever he so much as opens his mouth. For a while, he looked unbeatable.
But now a contender has arrived, and he is glorious. Since first being brought aboard as Morgan’s holiday cover in the middle of last year, Richard Madeley has quietly carved out a niche of his own. Madeley isn’t as combative as Morgan, but what he lacks in aggression he also lacks in self-awareness. A one-man Accidental Partridge generator, Madeley is fast developing into Good Morning Britain’s real star. In his first week, he overcooked a link about quicksand and veered off into confusing tangents about Gaby Roslin. In March, he commented lustily on a weather presenter’s dress immediately before crashing into a segment about the #MeToo movement.
And on Tuesday – and this might be what ultimately clinches his victory – Madeley prematurely ended an interview with Gavin Williamson live on air. Peeved that the defence secretary wouldn’t answer a question on some recent language about Russia, Madeley began to scrawl furiously on his script. “You’re not gonna answer, are you? OK, alright, OK, interview terminated then”, he barked like a stroppy teenager, while an African elephant aimlessly stumbled around behind Williamson’s back.
It was all there. Drama, showmanship and, most of all, the sense that this was just the tip of the iceberg. Over the years, Madeley has essentially become a concentrated version of himself. You sense that all the golden moments of old – the Ali G impersonation, the time he shook his fist at his daughter’s mugger on live TV – have been inexorably leading to a moment like this.
Whenever he appears on camera, Madeley gets to ride roughshod over Good Morning Britain. It’s a place where he’s allowed to indulge all of his whims and digressions, no matter how batty or grumpy they happen to be. If Madeley is suddenly gripped by an idea – and he often is – Good Morning Britain is now the place where it can rise up and consume him.
Make no mistake, Morgan created this environment. Thanks to him, Good Morning Britain’s dynamic is now one where the male hosts get to bulldoze whatever boorish path they like and the – much more traditionally competent – female hosts good-naturedly roll their eyes at the damage. When Morgan goes away, Madeley fills this vacuum perfectly.
The problem is that Madeley is better at this than Morgan. The latter is hamstrung by his need to constantly be seen as a capital-J journalist; a man forged in the fires of tabloid publishing, doggedly seeking out the truth no matter how unappealing it makes him look. But Madeley’s training ground was daytime television, so he’s softer and more camera-ready. Where Morgan looks angry, Madeley just looks clueless, and cluelessness is much more palatable first thing in the morning.
This might be premature, but it feels as if the competition is over. The Piers Morgan experiment was a noble one, but Richard Madeley is the T-1000 to his T-800. He’s slicker and harder to resist. Instead of punching you to death, Richard Madeley will creep into your room and shove a spike through your face. At this point, Good Morning Britain is his for the taking. Unless Good Morning Britain does something radical and hires someone more suited to the job. Someone like, I don’t know, a tomato on a stick.
