April

PM in ICU. No PPE for NHS

WEDNESDAY 1 APRIL

I’m having to do my own make-up at work, and today I accidentally picked up the wrong pot and managed to paint myself bright orange. I only realised when viewers bombarded me on Twitter with gleefully mocking messages.

‘How bad is it?’ I whispered to Susanna, now back at work after her enforced quarantine.

‘It’s not great,’ she giggled, ‘there are some … blending issues.’

Lorraine Kelly was less polite when she saw me later. ‘It’s like a satsuma had a fling with a tangerine and then they both went to a tanning booth.’

I’ve had a lot of uncomfortable moments on live TV, but trying to present the most serious news story of my lifetime while knowing I was resembling a human pumpkin is possibly the most excruciating. It didn’t stop me getting into a heated debate with Housing Minister Robert Jenrick, again, over the government’s failure over testing. He confirmed that we’re currently carrying out just one-tenth (8,000) of the daily tests Germany (80,000) is doing – but couldn’t explain the disparity.

‘Why is Germany testing ten times as many of its citizens a day as we are?’ I demanded. ‘That is a complete disgrace. We’re supposed to be the sixth biggest economy in the world. How can we have got to this position given we’ve known for a while that intensive testing is the absolutely crucial thing to be doing?’

‘Different countries have different strategies,’ Jenrick stammered. ‘That’s the advice we’ve had from the scientists.’

This constant deferring to the scientists is driving me nuts. These politicians were elected to make decisions, not pass the buck to anyone but themselves. And why do we have a different strategy to testing anyway? The WHO has said for months that testing is the key to getting on top of this virus. Our chronic lack of testing means we have no idea how many people have the virus, or have had it, and without that information it’s impossible to let people go back to work and restart the economy, which will be crucial to our ability to recover when this is all over.

It also means most health workers can’t be tested and many are therefore forced to self-isolate for two weeks if they or a household member shows any symptoms, without even knowing for sure they have it. One paramedic this week revealed he and his three fellow paramedic flatmates have all been forced to do this – taking them off the frontline for 14 days at the most intense, vital time.

‘Why can’t any of you give a straight answer?’ I asked Jenrick, about Germany’s superior testing. ‘No government minister can give a straight answer to that very simple but very important question.’

‘Well, I don’t have the latest figures for Germany,’ he replied. ‘We believe we have the capacity to test 12,700 people.’

The wording of this sentence was extraordinary. Having the ‘capacity’ to do something doesn’t mean you’re actually doing it. I have the capacity to sleep with 1,000 supermodels, but I’m not sleeping with any.

I quoted Jenrick the words of The Lancet’s Richard Horton, who tweeted while we were on air, ‘The handling of the Covid-19 crisis in the UK is the most serious science policy failure in a generation. Last week the Deputy CMO said, “There comes a point in a pandemic where that [testing] is not an appropriate intervention.” Now a priority. Public message: utter confusion.’

‘No one can understand how we got this so wrong,’ I said. ‘Can you explain?’

‘We have a particular strategy,’ he said. ‘We don’t test in the same way.’

That much is painfully obvious. I then asked him about the government’s inexplicable decision to keep all the airports open for business.

‘Just to clarify,’ I said, ‘if you land from Italy right now, or New York, which are both being ravaged by coronavirus, what happens to you when you land?’

‘For most of those individuals they wouldn’t be tested,’ he admitted. ‘They enter the country if they are able to do so.’

‘So, they just come in, there’s no mandatory quarantining?’

‘Those individuals who have symptoms are taken down one route, those who are not symptomatic are allowed to enter the country. That is on the basis of medical opinion. We have been guided in our approach at airports, as elsewhere, by scientific and medical opinion, and I appreciate that other countries have different approaches there.’

So, the UK is behaving in a completely different way to other countries – but nobody in government can explain why, other than ‘we’re following the science’.

I cannot help but feel that we simply didn’t prepare for this kind of pandemic and have now caught the mother of all colds.

On social media, aside from the general fury – mainly stemming from people with pro-Brexit and Boris slogans in their Twitter bios – that greets any criticism of the government, there’s also still an ugly growing sentiment of, ‘If it only attacks the old and sick, why do the rest of us have to stay in?’

Infuriated by this attitude, I tweeted, ‘I don’t give a damn how old someone is, or if they have an underlying condition, every single life is equally important. Those casually suggesting they should be sacrificed in this coronavirus crisis for the greater economic good are disgusting. Where’s our humanity?’

It was one of my most-liked tweets ever, suggesting it struck a chord and many others feel the way I do. We need the compassionate voices to be as loud, or louder, as the selfish ones.

FRIDAY 3 APRIL

One of the most haunting tragedies of the crisis has been the case of a 13-year-old boy named Ismail Mohamed Abdulwahab, the youngest person in Britain so far to die from coronavirus. Ismail, from Brixton in south London, died alone in hospital this week because two of his siblings are displaying symptoms of the disease, forcing the whole family to self-isolate, including his mother. For a young boy to die like that, and for a mother to be unable to see him as he did so, is utterly heart-breaking. Today, photos emerged of him being buried by men in hazmat suits lowering his coffin into the ground. It was one of the saddest things I’ve ever seen and stung me to tears. I imagined that being one of my own sons, left to die alone. Just horrendous.

SATURDAY 4 APRIL

Another 708 UK coronavirus deaths were reported today, the worst day of the crisis so far. Each one is a person, a loved one, someone’s grandparent, parent, sibling, child, friend. It’s devastating.

Today’s Daily Mail splashed on the growing horror in our care homes, where staff have little PPE and there is barely any testing for them or the residents. There are 11,000 care homes in Britain, housing over 400,000 elderly people.

‘This is incredibly serious,’ I tweeted, ‘so many old & vulnerable people at grave risk, and who is properly protecting the care workers at all these homes? Hospitals are not only the [sic] war zones in this battle.’

By horrible coincidence, an old schoolfriend, Annali-Joy Middleton, emailed me to say her mother has tested positive for Covid-19 in her care home and won’t recover. Even more heart-breakingly, none of the family is allowed to go and see her, so their last conversation will have to be done on FaceTime using a carer’s mobile phone. I can’t imagine having to say goodbye to a parent like that. The way coronavirus separates loving families from each other at their darkest moment is so cruel.

SUNDAY 5 APRIL

Tonight, the Queen addressed the nation. These are extraordinarily unsettling times and much more loss and grief will sadly ensue, interspersed with flashes of hope and the ecstatic joy of people surviving against all odds. With our current prime minister incapacitated, and a series of bumbling government ministers having the combined comforting effect of lying on a bed of rusty nails, all eyes turned tonight to a 93-year-old woman sitting in a castle where she has been self-isolating with her 98-year-old husband.

Queen Elizabeth II has reigned in the United Kingdom for a staggering 68 years. During that entire time – the longest period served by a current world ruler of any kind – she has barely put a regal foot wrong and on only four occasions has she felt compelled to address the nation outside of her annual Christmas speech: at the time of the first Gulf War in 1991, after the deaths of Princess Diana and then her mother in 1997 and 2002, and on the occasion of her Diamond Jubilee celebrations in 2012. But this was her most important address, one that came when every single person in Britain has been profoundly affected by a deadly virus that is destroying lives as fast as it is destroying jobs and economies.

And in just five short minutes, Her Majesty gave the greatest speech of her life. It was eloquent, powerful, evocative and perfectly pitched – thanking health workers for risking their lives to save ours, and the public for (largely) obeying government lockdown rules, but also urging all of us to dig deep into our individual reservoirs of stoic strength to get us collectively through this endurance test. This is Queen speak for ‘Stop being so damn selfish!’

‘Together we are tackling this disease,’ she said, ‘and I want to reassure you that if we remain united and resolute, then we will overcome it. I hope in the years to come everyone will be able to take pride in how they responded to this challenge. And those who come after us will say Britons of this generation were as strong as any. That the attributes of self-discipline, of quiet good-humoured resolve and of fellow feeling still characterise this country. The pride in who we are is not a part of our past, it defines our present and the future.’

Then she got personal. The Queen could have done this by saying that her own 71-year-old son and heir Prince Charles was infected by the virus last week, a worrying time for any mother given his age. But she didn’t. Instead, she reminded us of the time during WWII when thousands of young children were evacuated from British cities into the countryside, separated from their parents for their own safety. She and her late sister Princess Margaret, themselves both very young at the time, recorded a radio message to those kids to offer them comfort and hope.

It was the Queen’s first-ever broadcast and was also taped at Windsor Castle, where she taped the latest one. ‘Today, once again,’ she said last night, ‘many will feel a painful sense of separation from their loved ones. But now, as then, we know, deep down, that it is the right thing to do.’

The Queen ended with this rallying cry: ‘We should take comfort that while we have more still to endure, better days will return; we will be with our friends again; we will be with our families again; we will meet again.’

I felt a tear in my eye well up when I heard those words, and I’m sure I wasn’t alone as social media instantly exploded with emotional praise. In her own uniquely influential way, the Queen made the British people feel better, lifted our spirits and gave us hope for the future.

‘A magnificent speech from a magnificent lady,’ I tweeted as soon as the address finished. ‘Thank you, Your Majesty – this was your finest moment as our Monarch.’

And I meant it.

MONDAY 6 APRIL

A day of endless irritations began with Meghan and Harry announcing (is there any day they’re not announcing something?) plans to launch a new charitable organisation, Archewell – named after their son Archie, whom they insist they want to keep private – that we’re told aims ‘to do something that matters’.

Aside from the grotesquely tone-deaf inappropriateness of doing this immediately after the Queen addressed the nation about coronavirus, I imagine the total number of f*cks the British public currently gives about these two self-regarding brats, announcing their ‘plans’ as they do nothing that matters in a Hollywood mansion, could be written on the back of a postage stamp.

I was also incensed by news that Liverpool Football Club, owned by US billionaires, is furloughing its staff after making £45 million profit last year. As I said on GMB this morning, why would such a great club, riding so high under their brilliant manager Jürgen Klopp, trash its reputation like this? Getting the British taxpayer to pay 80 per cent of employee salaries, when they’re paying their players £5–10 million a year and making tens of millions of pounds in gate receipts and fees for winning the Champions League, is an astonishingly stupid decision. I was attacked by Liverpool legend John Barnes for saying this but supported by many of the club’s fans on Twitter – and this evening, Liverpool’s owners announced they would no longer be furloughing staff. It’s the right thing to do, just a pity they had to be shamed into it.

The most shocking news, however, came around 8 pm with the announcement that Boris Johnson has been taken into intensive care after his condition worsened. It’s obviously very serious, as it is for anyone admitted with the virus to ICU, where the survival rate is said to be no more than 50 per cent. Sadly, even this didn’t spare Boris the vicious wrath of the vile #BeKind Twitter troll mob, who began joyfully celebrating the news and, disgustingly, wishing him dead.

As we watched the shocking news, Cory, our long-time Filipino housekeeper and nanny, told me that one of her friends works in the very intensive care unit at St Thomas’ Hospital where Boris is now fighting for his life.

‘Do you have many friends working in the NHS?’

‘Oh yes,’ said Cory.

‘Give me their names and jobs,’ I replied.

They were: Aeron Aquino, a nurse manager at Guy’s Hospital and Nightingale Hospital; Cherifer Mamuyac and Venus Daquiz, nurses in the infectious diseases team at Northwick Park Hospital; Princess Shorter, a nurse at St Mary’s Hospital; Louie Nuesa, a nurse at Queen Alexandra Hospital in Portsmouth; and Ayesha Nuesa, a senior staff nurse at the intensive care unit at Guy’s and St Thomas’. To my astonishment, I then discovered there are nearly 20,000 Filipinos in the NHS, out of a total of over 55,000 immigrant health workers. I had no idea it was that many. How shameful that they’ve had to spend the last few years having their very existence in this country so belittled and abused during the vicious and sometimes openly racist Brexit debate. ‘Why do we let all these damn foreigners come over ’ere?’ was the repeated question.

To save our damn lives, it would seem.

TUESDAY 7 APRIL

Boris was still alive, but in critical condition, when I got to work at 5.15 am. Once we got on air, amid all the drama, I suddenly remembered Cory’s friends and read out their names.

‘We forget about this extraordinary workforce who comes from all round the world to help the NHS,’ I said.

‘I think we particularly value them right now,’ agreed Susanna, whose mum is a nurse.

‘An amazing number of Filipinos work in our NHS,’ I said. ‘Unsung heroes. It’s worth bearing in mind when we talk about immigrants in this country, that these are the immigrants currently saving people’s lives, coming here and enriching our country and doing an amazing job. So, thank you to all the Filipinos who are here and doing all this amazing work, and to every other immigrant working in the NHS currently. At the end of this, I hope we have a different sentiment, a different feeling about what immigration has done for this country.’

A clip of what I said went viral on social media and got over five million views. Former Home Secretary Sajid Javid, himself the son of a Pakistani bus driver, retweeted it with the words, ‘We should all take a moment and reflect on the invaluable contribution of immigrants (and their adult children) to our NHS. Without them – however challenging things are now – so many more lives would be lost.’

We should do more than just reflect. When this is all over, we need to radically change the way we show our appreciation for these people. Clapping is fine but it doesn’t pay the bills.

WEDNESDAY 8 APRIL

I got into a blazing argument on GMB with Mayor Sadiq Khan when he tried to defend not providing London’s bus drivers with proper PPE despite nine of them so far dying from coronavirus. He protested that he was ‘following the advice of experts’ who said the drivers don’t need full PPE. To which I retorted it was high time he followed common bloody sense, because self-evidently they do need it urgently – and more will die if they don’t get it. I suspect Khan knows this and agrees with me.

But the shameful truth he doesn’t want to admit publicly is that we simply don’t have enough PPE for frontline NHS health workers, let alone others in the coronavirus war support system like bus drivers, shop assistants, pharmacists, teachers, police officers, binworkers and mail workers. We’re sending all these brave warriors out to fight this war for us with their hands tied behind their back. And they’re dying as a result.

Meanwhile, there are many selfish fools who think it’s fine to break the lockdown rules, like footballer Jack Grealish, the Aston Villa captain, who has been charged with driving without due care and attention after he reportedly crashed into two parked cars after attending an all-night party at a mate’s house. What made his behaviour so particularly outrageous was that less than 24 hours before the alleged incident, Grealish had issued a public appeal to his social media followers to ‘Stay home. Protect the NHS. Save Lives’. Having lectured us all, he then apparently went out, failed to protect the NHS and might have cost lives.

Thankfully, it’s not all misery and selfishness. Extraordinary tales of inspiration are shining through the darkness, via the mouths of those who survive the virus against all the odds and emerge blinking into the sunlight again, clapped and cheered as they leave hospital by the NHS heroes who saved them. One of them was Hylton Murray-Philipson, 61, a remarkably eloquent farmer from Market Harborough who survived a week in intensive care with Covid-19 and told us on GMB today how the experience has given him a new appreciation for life and the little things he will no longer take for granted. ‘Honestly, I’m seeing the world with fresh eyes, as if I am a child again,’ he said. ‘Every little thing is magic.’

Of the medical staff who saved him, he became emotional as he said, ‘It doesn’t really matter what age you are, you go back to a state of childhood and complete and utter dependence on the kindness of others for every little thing in your 24 hours. How can you not bond with somebody who is washing your back, who has just been stroking your brow and whispering in your ear, “You’re going to be OK. You’re going to make it”? The individuals have come from all over the world but the quality of human compassion is just absolutely phenomenal.’

And what did he fantasise most about as he lay fighting for his life?

‘A piece of toast and marmalade. That’s enough for me.’

Susanna and I both felt very emotional after the interview. It’s been utterly draining covering this story, with its seemingly unrelenting horror. These little stories of hope lift the heart and are incredibly important to balance all the grimness.

Boris is out of intensive care. I’m very relieved and pleased he is on the mend. I’ve known him for 30 years and we’ve always got on well personally. But the health of one man, however important he is, shouldn’t turn attention away from the horrifying new coronavirus death figures for the UK. Nearly 1,000 deaths were recorded in the past 24 hours, a massive spike in fatalities that now puts us on a trajectory to potentially having the worst death rate in Europe.

SUNDAY 12 APRIL

Boris has released a video of himself recuperating at Chequers. He looked OK, if a little pale and slimmer, and spoke in a serious, heartfelt way about how grateful he is to the NHS heroes who he said had ‘saved my life, no question’.

As I was watching him at home, someone asked me on Twitter what’s the first thing I’ll do when this is all over. I thought for a bit then replied that I’d jump in my car, head down to Newick, rendezvous with my cricket club mates at the Royal Oak, drink 12 pints of Harvey’s best bitter, then stumble joyfully to the next-door Tandoori restaurant for a chicken tikka masala. That’s what freedom would taste like to me.

‘Can you walk 100 laps of your garden, Piers?’ replied someone named Captain Tom Moore. I wasn’t sure what he was getting at until I discovered he’s a 99-year-old World War II veteran who is currently walking 100 laps of his garden before his 100th birthday on 30 April – to raise cash for the NHS.

Apparently, he originally hoped to make £1,000 but after a regional ITV station picked up his story, his endeavour has gone viral and money is now pouring in.

‘Haha, no Tom!’ I responded. ‘Love what you’re doing – keep pounding.’

Then I told the GMB team to book him for tomorrow’s show.

Tonight, Cory told me that one of her Filipino NHS friends, whom I mentioned on air, has contracted Covid-19 from treating patients and is very sick in the same St Thomas’ Hospital where Boris had been.

MONDAY 13 APRIL

By the time Susanna and I spoke to Captain Tom Moore, his JustGiving donation page had soared to £350,000, and he’d set himself a new target of £500,000.

He explained his motivation: ‘When our nurses go into work at the moment,’ he said, ‘they must feel like Daniel going into the lion’s den because they don’t know what’s going to happen, but they know they’re in for a pretty tough day and by gum they’re brave.’

Captain Tom, appearing with his daughter Hannah, whom he has lived with since his wife Pamela died in 2006, added, ‘In the war, we had to carry on whatever was going on and we knew eventually we were going to win and it’s the same with this virus. There’s no doubt we’re on the winning side. We shall survive and we shall all get through it well in the end.’

This rousing rallying cry to the nation moved me so much I told Captain Tom I would donate £10,000 myself and urged viewers to chip in too. Within four hours of our interview, he’d reached the £500,000.

‘I can’t thank you enough, sir,’ a delighted Tom tweeted me (I suspect with a bit of help!), ‘hats off!’

‘Hey, Captain Tom,’ I replied, ‘why stop at £500k? Let’s go for £1 million …’

I then urged my 7.5 million followers to donate, and watched the total surge all day.

TUESDAY 14 APRIL

America is now the epicentre of the coronavirus crisis, and what is abundantly clear is that President Trump and his administration, like the UK government, was shamefully late to recognise the severity of the Covid-19 threat and as a result has played catastrophically bad catch-up ever since. This complacency has left the USA, and Britain, woefully underprepared when it comes to having enough of the right tools to fight the virus – from PPE for health workers to tests, ventilators, masks and other vital pieces of kit.

From the start of this crisis, President Trump has tried to rely on his usual political methodology – attacking opponents, trashing the ‘fake news’ media, blaming anyone and everyone but himself, pretending things are better than they are, and congratulating himself repeatedly for making all the right decisions. But his tactics aren’t working this time because Americans are dying in their droves from coronavirus at a rate faster than almost anywhere else in the world, and they’re seeing the stark, horrific reality in the shape of mass open-air graves being prepared and field hospitals being set up in parks. They’re also seeing the US economy tank like never before, jobs being destroyed in historically bad numbers, and vast swathes of the American public being plunged into poverty, homelessness and misery.

This is as bad as it gets; a grim Ground Zero for most Americans who’ve never had to even contemplate such terrible hardship, let alone actually endure it. Yet every day their president pops up for several hours on TV to pontificate about how it’s not really that bad, how things will all bounce back quickly and how he couldn’t possibly be doing a better job. Blah blah bloody blah. It’s become an increasingly nauseating spectacle and last night President Trump reached a new low with a press briefing performance that was frankly an utter disgrace.

Time and again reporters asked him perfectly legitimate questions about his administration’s handling of this crisis, and time and again Trump furiously abused, denounced and dismissed them with sneering contempt. He ranted, raved, mocked and derided in such an appalling manner that by the time he finished, the hashtag #TrumpMeltdown was the no. 1 trending topic on Twitter in America.

This was worse than just a meltdown. This was the most undignified and pathetic display I have ever seen from any world leader in a global crisis, let alone the president of the United States. And where once I could occasionally defend his combative, abrasive style against what I have often felt has been an unfairly hostile media, I cannot defend this and have become increasingly vociferous in my criticism of him on air, and in my columns and tweets.

WEDNESDAY 15 APRIL

‘I’d like to see the magnificently inspiring Captain Tom be knighted for his services to his country in WWII & now to the NHS,’ I tweeted. ‘Who’s with me?’

Almost 90,000 people liked the tweet, showing just how much this doggedly determined, charming old man has inspired us all. His rapid ascent into the national and indeed global consciousness, and conscience, has been an astonishing thing to watch. Captain Tom’s most admirable quality is his humility. He doesn’t see himself or what he’s doing as anything special. Yet we all do because there’s something so incredibly moving about watching him shuffle slowly up and down his garden to do his bit for the NHS. We interviewed him again today after his total reached £900,000.

‘It’s marvellous that so many kind people are helping those on the frontline,’ he said with typical modesty, ‘our army in this war are wearing nurse and doctor uniforms.’

Captain Tom surged past £1 million a few minutes after we came off air, and carried on surging all day to £4 million by midnight, with people from all around the world joining in.

I’ve been really enjoying throwing the full power of my TV and social media platform behind him. It feels so much more meaningful than throwing it behind taking another whack at Meghan Markle or venting my rage at papoose-wearing radical vegans. Helping Tom help the NHS in its toughest moment is something that unites everyone rather than inflaming division.

The same cannot be said for the procession of hapless government ministers being sent out to defend the indefensible with shockingly poor knowledge and interview skills. Today, the Care Minister Helen Whately appeared on GMB and was unable to tell me how many NHS and care home workers have died from the virus.

‘Your focus on figures slightly belies the fact we are talking about individual people’s lives here,’ she replied.

‘I just asked you how many health workers and care workers have died from coronavirus on the frontline,’ I persisted. ‘Do you know the answer?’

‘The latest information we have for NHS workers is that 19 NHS workers have very sadly died.’

‘That’s complete and utter nonsense,’ I retorted. ‘The Mirror had 38 yesterday.’

‘I don’t get my data from newspapers,’ she said. ‘The official figure I have been given for health workers is 19, but we do also know that some workers have died in social care and I’ll be straight with you, we don’t have a figure for that.’

I then asked her if it was true, as the Daily Mail screamed on its front page this morning, that as many as 4,000 people may have died in care homes, but she hadn’t got a clue. In fact, she laughed – I assume, let’s be generous here, from nerves – as I asked the question, just as she laughed again later in the interview during a startlingly inappropriate and jarring performance that exposed both her shocking ineptitude and the government’s worrying reliance on incredibly inexperienced people to handle this enormous crisis.

There were over 600 complaints to OFCOM that I was too hard on her, but she’s the care minister at a time when there is an epidemic of coronavirus in care homes due to government incompetence and it is my fundamental duty as a journalist to hold her accountable. ‘Apparently some people found my interview with care minister Helen Whately today “uncomfortable”,’ I tweeted. ‘For perspective, it probably wasn’t as “uncomfortable” as what our under-protected NHS & carer frontline heroes are going through.’

Many viewers approved of my bombastic style though. ‘BOOM @piermorgan,’ tweeted Rose McGowan, ‘this is like watching a fly get stuck on sticky paper.’ Former Tory MP Anna Soubry agreed. ‘What irresponsible idiot put up a badly briefed, inexperienced minister for interview by @piersmorgan?’ she raged. ‘He takes no prisoners & yes he interrupts when he shouldn’t (nothing new) but he’s trying to get the answers & action that millions are demanding.’

Matt Hancock released a video message to the nation later. ‘Throughout this crisis,’ he said, ‘we’ve been working incredibly hard to protect people in social care and today we can announce that everybody going from hospital into social care will be tested and will be isolated while the result of that test comes through, because that helps to protect people who are in social care, who are after all some of the most vulnerable people in the country.’

I had to watch this several times before I could fully comprehend what I’d just heard.

So, let me get this absolutely straight: we’ve spent the past few weeks sending hordes of elderly people out of hospitals, where coronavirus is rife, back into care homes without testing them for the virus? This is the very epitome of the phrase ‘lambs to the slaughter’, isn’t it? Yet this strategy supposedly constitutes ‘working incredibly hard to protect people in social care’?

The result of this appalling negligence – and there’s no other word for it – is that Britain’s care homes are now exploding with coronavirus, both among the residents and the heroic care workers trying to look after them, often without adequate PPE. The situation is so catastrophically bad that the government has no idea how bad it is.

I’m on a WhatsApp group chat with a few top TV news journalist mates and we all agree that we can’t recall a time when both the government and opposition ranks seemed to be so lacking in calibre, with the honourable exception of Chancellor Rishi Sunak, who has been commendably authoritative during his press briefing stints.

Nobody pretends it’s an easy time to be running this country, or indeed any country. But it feels, increasingly, disconcertingly evident that many of the people charged with doing so in Britain don’t have a clue what they’re doing.

There’s also been stinking self-serving hypocrisy by our leadership. Michael Gove, one of the most senior government ministers, was forced to self-isolate when his daughter showed symptoms of coronavirus. If that situation happens to anyone working on the NHS frontline, it’s almost impossible for them to get a test for their child, so they are compelled to stay at home for 14 days without even knowing if there is a good reason to. But Gove spoke to the Chief Medical Officer Chris Whitty and asked him if he could have a test for his child. He was told he could, his daughter was tested, thankfully found to not have the virus, and Gove was free to go back to work. Yet most politicians are doing their work from home, and I see no good reason why Gove can’t either. Instead, he got an incredibly valuable test to free himself from restrictive isolation when most NHS staff and care workers can’t. That too is shameful.

The first duty of any government is to keep its people safe and to protect public health. This government has spectacularly failed in that duty during this crisis so far. The only questions now are how many lives will it cost, how much damage will it cause to our economy and what impact will it have on our already divided society?

THURSDAY 16 APRIL

Captain Tom has now raised £12 million, making him the biggest single fundraiser in JustGiving history.

‘This is absurd!’ I told him when he came back on GMB.

‘It certainly is!’ he agreed.

Hannah told him about my knighthood campaign, which made several newspaper front pages today.

‘I’ve never anticipated anything like that,’ he chuckled. ‘Our Queen is perfect, and we should all be so proud of her.’

‘If she did knight you,’ I asked, ‘what would you say to her?’

‘I would say, “Your Majesty, this is the greatest honour anyone could get, because you are such a marvellous person,” and then I would remind her that she and I both served in her father’s army in the war.’

As for this war, Captain Tom remained resolute: ‘The future is in front of us all, and things will get better and we will get through this very difficult time. We’ve fought so many battles as a country and we’ve always won, and this time we will win again. Remember, tomorrow will be a good day.’

There’s something so extraordinarily powerful about his simple but inspiring rhetoric. If only the woke brigade, with their ludicrously misaligned focus on what matters, would take note. Captain Tom passed his 100 laps later in the morning but vowed to keep going. ‘I’ll continue walking as long as people are generous enough to donate to the NHS.’

Matt Hancock was back on GMB and, during a series of further testy exchanges, I pushed him on how many people are still flying into the UK.

‘Fifteen thousand a day,’ was his answer.

That’s 105,000 people a week flying in from all over the world, including from corona-ravaged countries, with no checks or quarantine.

Yet the rest of us are under enforced lockdown to ‘save lives’.

It’s madness.

Hancock recently targeted footballers, saying they should ‘do their bit’ financially to help.

Given that New Zealand Prime Minister Jacinda Ardern – one of several detail-oriented female world leaders, including Germany’s Angela Merkel, who seem to be handling this crisis a lot better than their blustering male counterparts – has just announced she and her cabinet are taking 20 per cent pay cuts for six months, I asked Hancock if he would be ‘doing his bit’ and following the New Zealand government’s lead.

‘No,’ came the answer.

FRIDAY 17 APRIL

For the past few years, feminist writer queen Caitlin Moran has repeatedly, and with great linguistic relish, whacked and ridiculed me in her weekly Celebrity ‘Top 10’ Watch column in The Times. This week, to my astonishment, I appeared in her no. 1 slot under the headline: ‘Piers Morgan uses his powers for good instead of evil.’

Ms Moran explained, ‘As I noted a few weeks ago, “the Awfulness” is bringing out unexpected changes in people – and one of the most notable is the Epic Coronavirus Journey of Piers Morgan. Morgan is a fascinating character for those who have a Blakean tendency to see the world in just one grain of sand – or, in this case, in one breakfast TV presenter and prominent contrarian … picking fights with feminists, trans activists, mental health campaigners, sundry “snowflakes” and, most quixotically, vegan sausage rolls.

‘Since coronavirus hit, though, everything has changed, for Morgan seems to have furloughed his beef with vegans, and Madonna’s bum, and has become one of the few presenters on TV trying to hold others to account for their tactics during the pandemic. Morgan has been mauling the Work and Pensions Secretary Thérèse Coffey for saying she had “no idea” how many care workers have died from Covid-19; savaged Care Minister Helen Whately; shouted “How dare you!” at Health Secretary Matt Hancock’s claim that the British strategy hadn’t changed; and called out Boris Johnson’s “failure of leadership”, even when Johnson was in hospital. He has also defended immigrant workers.

‘Most notably of all, he has used his Daily Mail column to round on Donald Trump – Morgan’s friend, and one of the few people he follows on Twitter – calling him “undignified, pathetic, ludicrous, shameless … an emperor with no clothes”, and ridiculing the President’s rambling boasts about his “ratings figures” with “I don’t want to hear that you’re a ratings hit – the reason you’re a ratings hit is because people are terrified because of the death count, and infection rates are going through the roof in your country.” If I were friends with the President of the United States, I probably wouldn’t slag him off. But it seems that now Morgan has something he can genuinely get his teeth into, he has no fear at all. Perhaps, all this time, Morgan has just been bored and spoiling for a fight – with only a sausage roll or a princess for an outlet. He is, at the moment, Right-On Piers. Definitely not the hero Gotham wanted – but the hero, it turned out, Gotham needed.’

Ms Moran may be onto something. I probably have been waiting for something meatier than a vegan sausage roll to sink my fangs into.

MONDAY 20 APRIL

‘Daddy, what did YOU do in the Great War?’ screamed the famous recruitment posters across Britain during World War I. That was the first time British civilians had been asked to enlist in large numbers to fight alongside regular professional armed forces. And the recruitment campaign, featuring young children sitting on their father’s knee after the war was over asking a very simple question, was a deliberately brutal, emotion-charged, guilt-inducing assault on an individual’s conscience. No man wanted to be the guy who had to reply: ‘Nothing, kids, I stayed at home and did nothing.’ Millions of men signed up as a result, answering the call to duty, and Britain and our allies eventually prevailed.

Ironically, in this new world battle with coronavirus, most of us are being asked to do what people then were shamed into NOT doing – stay at home and do nothing. That’s literally all the vast majority of us have to put ourselves through to help defeat the deadly enemy, Covid-19, as our heroic health workers do all the heavy fighting in hospitals and care homes at huge personal risk to themselves and their families.

Some, like Captain Tom, are doing a little bit more than just sitting at home. He won’t be around for future generations of his family to ask him what he did in the war on coronavirus, but he won’t have to – because everyone else will tell them. By stark contrast to this wonderful man’s attitude and commitment, which has now raised £27 million and rising fast, the coronavirus war has also brought out the very worst in far richer and more privileged people.

Take, for example, Victoria Beckham. She and her husband David popped up on Lady Gaga’s excellent One World version of ‘Live Aid’ last night – Gaga, to her great credit, personally raised over $30 million from corporate sponsors to help fight coronavirus – to speak of their deep gratitude to all health workers. They’ve also posted a series of videos of themselves applauding the same workers. Yet when it comes to doing their bit for their country, what have the Beckhams done? It turns out they’ve decided to fleece the British taxpayer of money that should be going to support the NHS, that’s what.

Yes, arguably the most famous couple in Britain, worth a combined £335 million, have planned to furlough staff at Victoria’s failing VB Fashion company so the government has to fork out £2,500 each a month for 30 people. (I include David in this decision because he has repeatedly intervened to financially bankroll his wife’s business due to heavy losses it continues to incur, so is clearly a partner in all Victoria’s big decisions regarding it.) That works out at £75,000 a month, which is way less than the Beckhams will earn in interest alone on their vast wealth during the period of this furloughing.

But that is £75,000 a month that could and should be going to the NHS, who so desperately need more PPE.

This decision comes several weeks after it was revealed the Beckhams have recently splashed out £17 million on a new penthouse apartment in Miami, and after they posed with a £2,000 bottle of wine they were drinking for dinner. So, this is a hugely rich couple who can easily afford to continue paying a few dozen employees through this tough time. Instead, they’ve decided to take taxpayer money that is desperately needed elsewhere.

It’s a perfectly legal move, but it’s also a perfectly immoral one for those who don’t need to do it. In fact, just as it was when big football clubs like Liverpool and Spurs announced they were doing the same (decisions they were shamed into reversing by justified social media outrage – one of the times when it can be a useful tool), it’s hard to think of a more selfish, shameless, greedy or exploitative decision or a more disgustingly hypocritical one, given how keen the Beckhams have been to show us all how much they care about the NHS.

Elsewhere, Meghan and Harry have resurfaced. We were told they wanted a ‘quieter, more private life’, especially for their young son Archie. So naturally, they’ve now washed up in Beverly Hills, the paparazzi epicentre of the world, where they’re living in a palatial home owned by TV star Tyler Perry. (I wonder who’s paying for it this time.)

I really don’t want to have to think about these two anymore as the crisis rages, but they keep hurling themselves into the news cycle as if they’re desperate to wrestle our attention back from a mere pandemic.

The timing of their move couldn’t be worse. Meghan and Harry have gone to Hollywood to relaunch their careers as full-time celebrities, only to find the whole world shutting down due to coronavirus, and celebrities being displaced by health workers as stars in most people’s eyes. To compound their irritation, the other senior royals back home in Britain, led by the Queen, Prince Charles and Camilla, and the Cambridges, have been doing their duty in a quietly, stoically magnificent way.

Last night, the Sussexes inexplicably decided this was a good time to launch yet another front in their pathetic on-going war with the media. In a statement of breathtakingly haughty arrogance, they announced they were banning four British newspapers from their lives, including the Daily Mail. They made one of their usual rambling, poorly written, whiny assaults on how awful the tabloids are, and got their new Hollywood PR firm Sunshine Sachs to send it – don’t laugh at the back – to the world’s media.

‘That’ll show ’em!’ they clearly thought to themselves, as they sat back in their luxurious mansion to wait for the inevitable applause and attention they’ve been missing for so long. Only, all it showed us was what a repellent pair of preening tone-deaf little twerps they really are.

Even more disgracefully, Prince Harry accused the British media of exaggerating the scale of this coronavirus crisis. How the hell does he know how bad it is from his Hollywood hideaway – did he call his father Prince Charles, who has been suffering from the virus many thousands of miles away?

It’s almost impossible to exaggerate how bad this crisis is: it’s causing unimaginable, relentless horror and grief and affecting all of us in a way we couldn’t have comprehended a few months ago. Lives are being destroyed, jobs are being destroyed, whole economies are being destroyed and almost everything we took for granted has been taken away.

Yet we’re supposed to think this is all some whipped-up hysteria by the media?

I won’t take such ill-informed lectures from a massively privileged man who quit his family and his country to pursue a vacuous new life of pampered self-indulgence in the world’s most shallow and media-frenzied city.

Nor will I take any orders about how I can or should behave as a journalist from a pair of spoilt little brats who contrary to their statement are still spending millions of pounds of taxpayers’ money on British royal protection squad officers. Imagine thinking the middle of a global pandemic is the right moment to declare another war on the media? Or being so deluded that you think anyone gives a shit about your bruised egos when so many health workers are being slaughtered on the frontline of this war? Or being so dumb that you think the public right now have even one ounce of interest or concern in how you’re portrayed by newspapers?

But then like the Beckhams, it’s sadly, pathetically clear that all the Sussexes care about, like so many self-obsessed privileged wokies, is themselves. They live in a me-me-me bubble that doesn’t allow for anything more important, like the worst global pandemic in a century, to interfere with their self-promotion.

When their grandkids sit on their knees and ask, ‘Granny, Grandpa, what did YOU do in the Great Coronavirus War?’ the Beckhams will be forced to reply, ‘We spent taxpayers’ money that should have gone to nurses,’ and the Sussexes will be forced to reply, ‘We moaned about our own beastly media coverage.’ Meanwhile, Captain Moore quietly got on with pounding his garden and raising tens of millions of pounds for those on the frontline. He is what we should all aspire to be. They are what we should all aspire not to be.

WEDNESDAY 22 APRIL

The United States has now had more coronavirus deaths than anywhere else in the world, and the rate of American infections (827,093) and deaths (over 45,000) continues to soar to horrific heights.

Yet despite this, thousands of protestors have begun marching all over the country in fury at the lockdown measures, from North Carolina and Missouri to Alabama and Oregon. They’re blocking streets, honking horns and angrily demanding their right to ‘freedom’. Many are armed with guns, the preferred instrument of protecting liberty for many Americans. And they are largely, though not exclusively, conservative and pro-Trump as can be seen from their banners, T-shirts and rhetoric.

In one particularly unedifying incident outside the state capitol building in Austin, Texas, the far-right American radio show host and notorious conspiracy theory whack-job Alex Jones fuelled chants of ‘You can’t close America!’, ‘Let us work!’ and even ‘Fire Fauci!’ in reference to Dr Anthony Fauci, America’s most brilliant and impressive medical expert.

The protestors have been actively encouraged by President Trump, who in a tweet storm several days ago blasted, ‘LIBERATE MINNESOTA!’, ‘LIBERATE MICHIGAN!’ and ‘LIBERATE VIRGINIA!’ – all states, and this was not a coincidence, run by Democrat governors.

By doing this, Trump encouraged the idea that coronavirus lockdowns are the enemy of liberty, even as his own experts were advising people to stay at home and obey them. And even as his own government advice remains that no state should reopen until they see 14 days of declining infections.

It would be easy to dismiss all the protestors as a bunch of Neanderthal idiots, but I will resist that temptation because it wouldn’t be accurate or fair. Some definitely are, judging by their inflammatory nonsensical ramblings when they’ve been interviewed. But others I’ve seen speaking out have seemed genuinely fearful and concerned for what the lockdowns mean for the crashing US economy, for jobs, and for public health from the inevitable poverty and homelessness that will escalate the longer this crisis goes on.

And there is a perfectly legitimate, indeed essential debate to be had about the merits of how strict a lockdown should be and how long it should last. One of the best things about America and its open democratic society is that this debate is being had publicly and loudly, in a way that shames countries like my own, Britain, where the government is behaving during this crisis like a Soviet-style regime intent on suppressing the truth.

However, when I see protestors squaring up angrily to health workers, as has begun happening more frequently in recent days, my heart sinks at the abysmal lack of respect for people on the frontline of this coronavirus war, who know they will soon be treating many of those protesting, and for the lack of basic common sense being applied by those demanding their ‘liberty’.

My question for the protestors is this: what kind of ‘freedom’ do you think ignoring lockdowns will bring? I imagine it is the kind that would allow them to go to a nice restaurant with their families and have a meal. I’d love to do that too, but I understand that to do so would be to put my life at risk, and the lives of others. Why don’t the protestors understand this?

I suspect the main reason is that they don’t believe or trust the ‘experts’ telling them not to. So, they see lockdowns as some kind of tyrannical threat being driven by politically motivated opponents who want to control their lives, a belief that has been disgracefully fuelled by their president.

I once had a very friendly conversation with a Texan oil tycoon about guns, at a time when I was engaged in a series of very unfriendly gun-related conversations on air at CNN following the Sandy Hook massacre. He explained to me that the reason so many Americans believe so passionately in the right to bear arms is that they genuinely fear the government may turn tyrannical on them and they need to be armed to defend their liberty for when that time comes.

I didn’t agree with that argument – not least because the US government has 5,800 nuclear warheads at its disposal so the fight wouldn’t last very long – but I understood it. I think this mindset explains why so many Americans are taking to the streets to protest against being locked down. They see it as an assault on their liberty, which is the very cornerstone of every American’s constitutional rights.

But it’s not. In fact, it’s the opposite: the lockdowns are designed to protect life and preserve liberty. Until there is a successful vaccine for Covid-19, or enough mass testing to work out who has had it and whether they have developed an immunity, the lockdowns are going to be an absolutely vital tool in fighting the virus.

And those who flout the rules may pay the ultimate price. Consider the story of a man named John McDaniel, 60, from Marion County in Ohio. On 15 March, he was so enraged by Governor Mike DeWine’s lockdown measures that he posted the following on Facebook: ‘If what I’m hearing is true, that DeWine has ordered the bars and restaurants to be closed, I say bullshit! He doesn’t have the authority. If you are paranoid about getting sick just don’t go out. It shouldn’t keep those of us from living our lives. This madness has to stop.’

Two days earlier, McDaniel, married with two children and boss of an industrial equipment supply company, suggested the dangers posed by the coronavirus had been massively exaggerated. ‘Does anybody have the guts to say this Covid-19 is a political ploy? Asking for a friend. Prove me wrong.’

John McDaniel died from Covid-19 last week.

FRIDAY 24 APRIL

I woke up to news that President Trump has suggested people suffering from Covid-19 should be injected with bleach. Trump made his absurd claim after William Bryan, the Department of Homeland Security under-secretary for science and technology, gave a presentation about new research which supposedly shows ‘emerging results’ that coronavirus degrades faster in warm conditions and dies quickest when exposed to direct sunlight. He didn’t explain why, if this is the case, the virus has wreaked havoc in warm-weather parts of the USA like Florida and Louisiana. Bryan added that his research also indicated bleach can kill the virus in five minutes, and a concentrated isopropyl alcohol solution can kill it in 30 seconds.

The president loved what he was hearing and decided to proffer his own ideas after Bryan had finished. His first was that irradiating patients’ bodies with UV light might work too.

‘Supposing we hit the body with a tremendous – whether it’s ultraviolet or just very powerful – light,’ he said, turning to Dr Deborah Birx, the White House coronavirus response coordinator, whose blinking face remained wearily impassive as he added, ‘and I think you said that hasn’t been checked but you’re going to test it? And then I said, supposing you brought the light inside of the body, which you can do through either the skin or in some other way. And I think you said you’re going to test that too. Sounds interesting.’

He then asked Dr Birx if she had ever heard of the ‘heat and light’ approach to treat the virus. ‘Not as a treatment,’ she replied. ‘I think it’s a great thing to look at,’ he countered. But this, it transpired, was just the warm-up – literally – for his BIG idea. ‘And then I see the disinfectant where it knocks it out in a minute,’ Trump mused. ‘One minute. And is there a way we can do something like that, by injection inside or almost a cleaning? So, it will be interesting to check that.’

At this point, Trump stated the only fact he uttered during this medical diatribe of nonsense: ‘I’m not a doctor. I’m like a person that has a good you-know-what.’

No, I don’t know what, actually. I just see a president pretending to be a medical expert and spewing theories that might have disastrous consequences.

Throughout this coronavirus crisis, Trump has turned the daily White House task force briefing into a rambling two-hour self-promoting rally – trashing the media, attacking political opponents, telling us how great he is and rewriting history as he tries to defend all the mistakes he’s made since the virus first erupted. And he’s done all this while 50,000 Americans have died from Covid-19, the worst death toll in the world, and nearly a million cases have now been reported across the country. But by far the most reckless and dangerous thing Trump has done is use the most powerful podium on earth to air his batshit crazy theories about how to beat the virus. And this is a horrible new low.

It’s hard to imagine a more stupid thing for a president to say than publicly float a completely unsubstantiated ‘idea’ like that, which will inevitably make some Americans believe having bleach inside them will cure the virus. For him to use his platform to fly absurdly delusional and dangerous medical ‘cures’ during this crisis is an outrageous abuse of his position.

Several weeks ago, he repeatedly pumped up a malaria drug hydroxychloroquine, and was joined by a number of enthusiastic conservative TV hosts and pundits. Then he, and they, suddenly stopped. Why? A study of coronavirus patients in a US military veterans’ hospital found more deaths among those treated with hydroxychloroquine than those treated without it.

So, it was doing more harm than good.

When Trump first began saying in mid-March what a good idea the drug was for coronavirus, a Phoenix man died after he and his wife attempted to self-medicate against the virus by drinking chloroquine phosphate, a fish-tank cleaning additive that they wrongly thought was the hydroxychloroquine Trump had been talking about on TV. His wife, who was left critically ill but survived, said, ‘We were scared of getting sick.’ How many Americans, also scared of getting sick now the crisis has escalated dramatically, will now be tempted to try taking bleach to combat Covid-19?

Some found Trump’s latest ridiculous medical theories amusing, and myriad Trump and bleach memes have gone viral on social media. But I don’t find any of this funny. In fact, I found his remarks breathtakingly stupid, reckless and dangerous. I posted a Daily Mail column saying all this, with the uncompromising headline: ‘SHUT THE F*CK UP, MR PRESIDENT: Trump’s batshit crazy coronavirus “cure” theories are not just shockingly senseless and stupid – they’re going to kill people.’

It was full-on, but he needs to understand how insanely dangerous his behaviour is becoming. I’m reminded of what Trump himself once told me about success. ‘You gotta win,’ he said. ‘That’s what it’s all about. Muhammad Ali used to talk and talk, but he won. If you talk and talk but lose, the act doesn’t play.’

Exactly. The president is currently talking and talking – but losing. And the act isn’t playing.

SATURDAY 25 APRIL

President Trump unfollowed me on Twitter overnight. I guess he didn’t like being told to shut the f*ck up.

MONDAY 27 APRIL

OFCOM has emphatically ruled in my favour about all the complaints over my fiery interview style with ministers, and done so with a significant statement of support for freedom of speech. ‘We assessed a number of complaints about Piers Morgan’s conduct while interviewing politicians about the UK’s response to the coronavirus public health crisis,’ the statement read. ‘Piers Morgan is well known for his combative interviewing style, and viewers would expect him to challenge senior politicians and hold them to account. His guests were given adequate opportunity to put their points across and counter the presenter’s criticisms. In OFCOM’s view, in line with freedom of expression, it is clearly in the public interest that broadcasters are able to hold those making political decisions to account, particularly during a major national crisis, such as the coronavirus pandemic.’

It’s great to see a regulatory body understand the vital importance of free speech and put it above the hysterical partisan attempts to suppress it.

There’s been an interesting debate raging in the Yorkshire Post about my conduct, fuelled by the paper’s columnist Anthony Clavane, who declared, ‘Hardly a morning goes by, these days, without Morgan tearing into a hapless minister on the show. It has become something of a national sport. […] Piers divides people. To some, he is a smug, name-dropping, arrogant buffoon who bullies hapless ministers. To others, he is, on this issue at least, the voice of reason, a champion of transparency and a presenter who robustly holds the powerful to account. I tend towards the latter view. True, in the past I’ve found his goading of liberals, his sycophancy towards Donald Trump and his all-round oafishness to be the breakfast TV equivalent of pickled eggs in pubs. But he has emerged as Britain’s answer to Howard Beale. You might remember that, in the 1975 film Network, Beale – played by Peter Finch – memorably raged, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take it anymore.”’

It’s not a bad analogy, though a slightly disconcerting one given that Beale ends up being shot dead on TV after going completely bonkers and tanking his ratings. But the response from his readers in the Post’s letters page reflects the bitter divide between so many Britons right now. One, David Warnes, raged, ‘During recent mornings, I have witnessed two female Cabinet ministers being subjected to rage and abuse by a TV presenter on Good Morning Britain. This trial by television was an obscenity. The bumptious and holier-than-thou Piers Morgan, and others of his ilk, need to be reminded that this country and indeed the world is at war. Could one imagine that sort of behaviour going on in the last war? No, in those days we had a supportive media which boosted morale against a common enemy and, in no small way, helped us win that war. Perhaps Mr Morgan and others like him could do with a spell of reflection in the Tower of London. Isn’t that what we do with subversives?’

To which another reader, Paul Harrison, replied, ‘I was intrigued by the somewhat draconian assertion of your correspondent that TV presenter Piers Morgan should be consigned to the Tower of London on the grounds that the journalist was subversive. Mr Morgan apparently had audaciously cross-examined two evidently inept Conservative ministers on the government’s failings during the current pandemic crisis. Mr Warnes goes on to remind us of the high moral standing of a “supportive media” during World War Two. I would, in turn, respectfully remind him that the conflict was fought in the defence of democracy, including the right of free speech, and an independent press.’ Quite right.

TUESDAY 28 APRIL

Home Office minister Victoria Atkins appeared on GMB after a shocking episode of Panorama last night exposed Britain’s abject failure to properly prepare for the onslaught of Covid-19.

It focused on the massive pandemic drill in 2016 named Exercise Cygnus, attended by all major government departments and health chiefs, that was an almost exact parallel to what is now happening and concluded that Britain was woefully short of many things, including, specifically, personal protective equipment for frontline health workers.

Yet as Panorama revealed, nothing was done to fix this shortage. And 134 NHS and care-home staff have now died from coronavirus. This is an absolute disgrace. Astonishingly, Ms Atkins, who hadn’t bothered to watch Panorama, had never heard of Exercise Cygnus despite being a Home Affairs Select Committee member at the time.

When I expressed my horror at her admission, she brazenly lied and suddenly announced she had heard of it, but when I asked her to reveal one single finding, she couldn’t, other than to repeat back what I had just told her. It was the single worst performance by any government minister on GMB since the crisis began, and the bar was sadly already very low.

‘Who in government takes the decision to send such underprepared ministers on to GMB?’ tweeted BBC broadcaster Andrew Neil after watching it. ‘It’s not a car crash, it’s a massive pile-up. Is the government that bereft of talent? If so, better not to send anyone. It’s excruciating.’

Incredibly, it seems to be a deliberate policy. The Sun reported that my ‘ferocious coronavirus maulings’ apparently ‘boost ministers’ standings’ because Downing Street focus groups suggest the public feels sorry for them. The paper quoted a Number 10 insider saying, ‘He doesn’t know it, but Piers is doing us a big favour. That’s why we keep sending ministers in front of him.’

Wow. A government actively celebrating its ministers getting exposed as woefully ill-informed imbeciles during the biggest crisis of our lifetime is beyond parody.

Tory MP Simon Hoare ripped into me on Twitter. ‘I’m afraid @piersmorgan is not acting as a journalist. As a barrack room lawyer? Yes. As a saloon bar bore? Yes. As a bully? Yes. As a show-off? Undoubtedly. He is not a seeker after truth: he’s a male chicken.’

To which Anna Soubry responded, ‘I’m more afraid of sycophantic MPs. Piers Morgan is doing his job. Tough questions must be asked of Govt & the scientists we are all placing our trust in. This MP would do better to demand proper answers from his Govt Ministers not spin & lies.’

WEDNESDAY 29 APRIL

Number 10 has thrown in the towel and decided not to put up any ministers on tomorrow’s show. I’m only surprised it took them this long.

I had an idea.

‘How long would it take to read out the names of every health and care worker who has died?’ I emailed the team. ‘Just their name and occupation – with their photo where one is available? It might be a powerful thing to do in the 8.30 am slot where we would normally interview the minister.’

THURSDAY 30 APRIL

Susanna and I spent six minutes slowly reading out all the names. It had a hugely emotional impact on viewers, and us.

Philip Collins in The Times wrote about the shocking quality of ministerial performances in TV interviews. ‘The standard of ministers being fielded is so lamentable,’ he wrote, ‘that Tory MPs are starting to worry. Victoria Atkins, the safeguarding minister, was the latest to collapse into incoherence on Good Morning Britain. Piers Morgan will be getting very fat with all the junior ministers he is having for breakfast.’

As #BeKind Twitter swiftly pointed out when I posted this quote, I’m definitely getting fat but that’s more down to the delights of Deliveroo during lockdown. More worryingly, the pandemic is starting to have the opposite effect on people than I had hoped. Rather than come together in a united spirit to fight the common enemy of coronavirus, we’re using it as an excuse to become even more divided. Yes, there are wonderful heroes like Captain Tom to lift our spirits. But there is also an increasing resentment building between those who have the means to survive the lockdown in comfort and those who don’t.

Far from being ‘the great equaliser’ as Madonna claimed in her rose-petalled bath, Covid-19 has turned out to be ‘the great divider’. The data emerging shows it predominantly attacks the poorest, oldest, sickest and therefore most vulnerable members of society. And it has shone a grim light on the selfishness of many younger, fitter and less vulnerable people that it spares from its deadly wrath, the ones who don’t want to accept that they need to make sacrifices for others.

We need to wake up. But will we?