Sacked Daily Mirror editor drowns his sorrows

By FRANCIS ELLIOTT

If past form is a guide, Piers Morgan woke in his riverside flat in west London yesterday and enjoyed a "blissful" moment of alcohol-induced amnesia.

The former newspaper editor held a small wake at his Fulham address after being "whacked" in true Fleet Steet style, escorted from his boss's office without time to collect his coat.

The photographers camping outside heard laughter and music coming from the first-floor balcony.

It is not known what refreshment was taken, but Morgan once said, "I always try and celebrate a massive error - preferably with a few bottles of chilled Krug and a jug of Jack Daniel's". That way, "You have that blissful moment in the morning when you're so hung over you literally can't remember your crime".

The consolations of champagne and bourbon are unlikely to have lasted for long, however, as the enormity of this career-ending blunder dawned.

The beginning of the end came last week when officers from the special investigation branch (SIB) of the Royal Military Police tracked down one of the two soldiers dubbed "A" and "B" by the Daily Mirror.

Army detectives had identified the lorry used in the now infamous pictures, published in New Zealand by the Sunday Star-Times. The unit involved was then easy to pin down, with the help of weapons records at the Kimberly TA Barracks, near Preston, where the pictures are thought to have been staged.

As the evidence mounted, the mood in the old War Office on Whitehall lightened as the Ministry of Defence sensed a comprehensive victory over the Daily Mirror. "When this report is published, Piers Morgan is going to have his balls fried," one senior official told the Independent on Sunday.

The Secretary of State for Defence, Geoff Hoon, turned up the pressure when he said there was mounting evidence that the pictures were fakes. It was a message reinforced by Tony Blair on Thursday, and on Friday Adam Ingram, Minister for the Armed Forces, finally confirmed they were "categorically" not taken in Iraq.

His words struck home on the 21st floor of Canary Wharf, London, the boardroom of Trinity Mirror, where executives were acutely aware of the growing nervousness among the company's institutional investors.

Nothing could save Morgan from the truth that he was the victim of a "calculated and malicious hoax". He hoped to survive with the defence that the photos still "accurately illustrated" the wider truth of abuses in Iraq. That's an error it should take him more than a few drinks to forget.

-- INDEPENDENT

Herald Feature: Iraq