Piers Morgan's just a bit of media Marmite …

Piers Morgan's real name might be Piers Marmite for all the grimaces he attracts. You either hate him, or you affect not to like him very much. His video performance on the Leveson interview show attracted predictable snarls and loathing from fellow journalists on both sides of the Atlantic. It's instructive to wonder why. A silver spoon beginning? No, his dad (name: O'Meara, a dentist) died when he was one. He did his O-levels at Challey comprehensive, East Sussex, and his A's at a sixth-form college in Lewes. Oxbridge? Dream on … Try Harlow College. A plum job in Fleet Street? Try beat reporting for the Streatham and Tooting News . OK. So Kelvin at the Sun spotted a showbusiness talent worth hiring. So Rupert, the Sun God, spotted a stripling editor for his News of the World . So the Mirror poached him and he met Tony Blair 58 times (more than Murdoch himself). So he finally got serious, opposed the war in Iraq, innocently published some hoax atrocity pictures and was asked to clear his desk. So why is that quite so loathsome? He left newspapers and went into TV, with signal success. Maybe his CNN interview show isn't a ratings wonder (but just look at CNN's ratings as a whole). Maybe his tweets and boasts and tall stories rile rivals and sum up a trade that loftier operators disdain. But who would even they throw off the lifeboat first: Morgan, or Heather Mills? In short, the histrionic loathing is much overdone; and the pursuit of the Piers of long ago seems merely gratuitous. Leveson flays evasive Morgan shock? No need for that, if you can reach for the remote and just switch him off.