Piers Morgan has addressed the criticism he received following his remarks about Liam Payne’s tragic death. The ex-One Direction star, 31, met a heartbreaking end last week after falling from the balcony of his hotel room on the third floor in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
He suffered multiple injuries leading to an “internal and external haemorrhage” which resulted in his death. On an episode of Piers’ YouTube show, Uncensored, there was a heated exchange involving Howie Mandel, Esther Krakue, and Liam’s friend and former X Factor colleague Katie Waissel, as well as radio personality James Barr.
Following the contentious discussion, fans of the late singer expressed their outrage on social media against Piers and Howie. James also voiced his disapproval on X, previously known as Twitter.
Addressing his 26.6k followers, the Hits Radio host commented: “The lack of accountability, empathy, and self-awareness in this debate is horrific.
“Talent judge @howiemandel defends his SyCo bosses, before jumping into a wax lyrical about ‘mental health’ that sounds like a Sesame Street chatGPT!
“He then refuses to listen and smugly announces that he’s off to judge Canada’s Got Talent, ‘Simon’s forcing me to go now’. It’s no surprise that Howie and @piersmorgan want to defend the people that pay them – but a boy is dead and this entire debate centred around victim blaming.
“What do we expect from a show that openly bullies Sam Smith, Dylan Mulvaney and Meghan Markle. I’m sorry Liam.”
Piers then fired off a scathing tweet directed at James, , reports the Mirror. The former Good Morning Britain host took to Twitter, where he commands an audience of 8.8 million followers, and blasted: “What pathetic virtue-signalling drivel. You, like the rest of us, have no idea what really happened to Liam. And may I remind you that you have regularly accepted payment to appear on our show that you now want to publicly trash, you shameless hypocrite.”
However, Piers’ remarks have sparked further controversy as X users hit back in the comments section.
One user retorted: “You practically invented the art of virtue-signaling. If anyone’s the expert on trashing people for a paycheck, it’s you,” while another chimed in: “You don’t have any agenda other than blaming people.”
A third added: “I can’t believe his attitude. So rude! Why can’t he conduct himself like a civilised human being? It’s so unnecessary. Open and honest discussion should be the way forward, not sneering condescension and grandiose self-importance.”
Piers claimed that Liam had substances “including cocaine, crack and benzodiazepine,” in his system at the time of his death. Local reports suggested these were part of a cocktail known as “pink cocaine” which includes drugs such as MDMA, ketamine, methamphetamine, cocaine, benzodiazepine and crack.
Howie remarked on Liam’s candid discussions about his struggles with substance abuse before he got clean. Piers interjected: “Howie, let me bring in Katie – what I will say there about Liam, who I didn’t know very well. I know some members of the band One Direction much better – Niall is a good friend of mine and so on. Clearly Niall and Harry Styles and Louis, they’ve all built incredibly successful solo careers, I’ve covered many boybands over the years, some of them end up doing better than others when they go solo.”
Meanwhile, Katie, now pursuing a career in law, has been vocal about the insufficient aftercare provided to her and fellow contestants following their stint on The X Factor in 2010.
As Piers probed into the responsibility The X Factor had towards its participants, Howie couldn’t hold back, exclaiming: “Nothing, nothing, nothing.”
James Barr chimed in, noting that these shows often refer to the contestants as “family”.
In a heated moment, Howie raised his voice over Katie, demanding: “Did she need help then?!” Esther then weighed in, highlighting the paradox of fame: “When these people are becoming famous and they’re getting the money that they want. But when you have the dark side of fame, that apparently becomes everyone else’s fault.”
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