When Piers Morgan isn’t busy covering the news, he’s likely making headlines on his own. The British journalist and television personality has a keen eye for knowing what people are interested in, and his brash, bold personality ensures that the news he uncovers will be noticed.
Morgan began his career in the British print media, but his international celebrity exploded following his television appearances as a judge on America’s Got Talent (2006-07) and Britain’s Got Talent (2007), his victory in 2008’s Celebrity Apprentice, and his hosting of CNN’s Piers Morgan Live (2010-2014). Today, he serves as U.S. editor at large for the world’s most-popular English-language news site, DailyMail.com, makes many television appearances, and follows (and tweets about) his beloved football team, Arsenal F.C., stalwart in the British Premier League.
He’s also a long-time BlackBerry user and recently spoke with us about his life, his family, his BlackBerry Passport, and the time he impressed hip-hop producer P. Diddy with his BlackBerry.
BlackBerry: Tell me about your first memories of coming to London.
Morgan: I came to London when I was about 17 or 18, when I was a journalism student. It was just after the Brixton riots, and there was an electricity about the streets. There was a sort of a feeling of London being the epicenter of excitement, of being a cultural and social whirlwind. Little bit dangerous, little bit edgy, lot of fun, great place to go and socialize, and when I put all those together I thought, yeah, my kind of place.
BlackBerry: And do you still feel that energy now?
Morgan: London just has a heartbeat unlike any other in the world. I’ve lived in New York and Los Angeles, and spent a lot of time in Paris and Madrid and Rome and so on. It’s an extraordinarily multicultural city, which I really like. You can walk up a street and you will meet 20 nationalities within 20 minutes. That to me is modern London. It is a place that anyone can come and be welcomed and be integrated, and those who knock London for that reason are not my kind of Londoners.
BlackBerry: The way you live your life, you’re always moving forward. Some things work, some things don’t, and you always have this kind of forward mentality.
Morgan: Winston Churchill said, “Success is going from failure to failure without any discernible loss of enthusiasm,” and I think that there is a good point to that, which is: people get defined [less] by success [and more by] how they deal with knock-backs in life. Most of the really successful people I know who’ve gone through decades of success have done it because, when things have gone wrong they’ve been able to deal with it and move on. If I had any talent it would be an ability to bounce back from apparent career- or life-ending adversity.
BlackBerry: Is that something you learned as a kid?
Morgan: I come from a big military family and the military have a very different view of life than most people. They have to go through extraordinary training, they’re highly disciplined and they obviously suffer many setbacks along the way to fighting for the freedom and democracy that we take for granted. Around my family is a sense of discipline, of being part of a family, of fighting for each other, and if things go wrong, stiff upper lip. Nobody wants to hear a moaner or a whiner, just get on with it, there’s no point banging on about things that haven’t worked. Make it better.
BlackBerry: I know you’ve been an outspoken user of BlackBerry for some time now. Why?
Morgan: I’ve stuck with BlackBerry through thick and thin, and I’ve been tempted. I’ve been out there when the shimmering silver of the rivals has caught my eye, but I have resisted because ultimately I use a BlackBerry as a business tool, and I want the best business tool. I want to be able to text and email and message and share information and share pictures and so on in a fast and efficient manner.
BlackBerry: What BlackBerry features do you use the most?
Morgan: My BlackBerry Passport is my office. I don’t really have a conventional office any more. The Hub allows me to be completely on top of texts, emails and messages, and Twitter and Facebook, and all the things I use on a very regular basis at the same time. I can’t afford to miss things, and I think that where the Passport is a hugely effective tool. The Hub gives me everything I’m using all the time in real time.
I’m the US editor at large for the DailyMail.com, which has over 200 million unique visitors a month. I use my BlackBerry Passport to post comments, to tweet, to get immediate global reaction. From Beijing to Mumbai to Dubai to Australia to Russia, you can see them [responding] in real time. The whole world is coming to me through my Passport, and I’ve got to have a device that can cope with that.
BlackBerry: What’s the greatest moment you’ve had with a BlackBerry?
Morgan: I think the greatest moment I ever had with new technology came thanks to BlackBerry. I was at an Oscar party in Los Angeles, and it was a nice sunny day, lots of big stars, and suddenly P. Diddy was walking straight towards me. I was tweeting at the time, using my Porsche Design BlackBerry which had just come out, and he wasn’t even looking at me – he was looking at my device. P. Diddy just came and sort of stroked it and said, “Where did you get this?” I said, “I know the people at BlackBerry, they very kindly let me use one.” He said, “I’ve been trying to get one of these man. Are they good?” I said, “They’re fantastic.” There was a pause, and I said, “Do you want me to get you one?” He said, “Oh that would be fantastic.” I said, “You leave it to me.”
I was able to bring P. Diddy up to my level of technology, one of the coolest guys in the world having to rely on me to make him look even cooler. That was pretty much my greatest moment.
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BlackBerry: The way you live your life, you’re always moving forward. Some things work, some things don’t, and you always have this kind of forward mentality. 
