Sacked newspaper editor gets $2.7m for memoirs

LONDON - Piers Morgan, the sacked Daily Mirror editor and one of the foremost proponents of chequebook journalism, is to be paid more than £1 million ($2.7 million) for his own story.

Morgan, who was dismissed from the Mirror in May after publishing hoax pictures of British soldiers abusing Iraqi prisoners, has signed a deal with Ebury Press, a division of Random House, to publish his memoirs.

The book, to be published in early spring, will be based on diaries Morgan kept throughout his stints as editor of the News of the World in 1994-1995 and, subsequently, of the Mirror.

Morgan is understood to have kept detailed notes on his personal dealings with prominent figures including Rupert Murdoch, Tony Blair, and Princess Diana with the intention of eventually publishing them. He is also believed to have kept a number of documents.

A source close to Morgan said yesterday that his friends could sleep soundly in their beds but others "will be having some sleepless nights."

The memoirs are likely to be nervously awaited by some in the media, showbusiness and politics because of Morgan's proven capacity for wreaking merciless public revenge on his enemies.

After Private Eye editor Ian Hislop published details of his private life, Morgan, who began his national newspaper career on the Sun's "Bizarre" gossip column, conducted a lurid campaign against the satirist in his newspaper. Readers were promised a dossier of dirt on Hislop and teams of Mirror journalists devoted hours to finding non-existent skeletons in his cupboard.

David Yelland, the former editor of the Sun - whom Morgan once described as "a poisonous, lying, cheating little spiv" - was subjected to a similar campaign and Morgan fell out with Cherie Blair, after initially being close to the New Labour project.

The memoirs will give Morgan's side of the numerous controversies that rocked his editorship of the Mirror, with which he won the Newspaper of the Year award in 2002. Shortly after joining the paper, he was forced to publish an apology to the German football team after a front page article headlined "Achtung! Surrender!" before the 1996 European football championship semi-final.

He will also give his own account of the Mirrorgate scandal, in which he was investigated for insider trading after buying shares shortly before his newspaper's "City Slicker" column tipped them, and of the publication of the hoax Iraqi abuse photographs that led to his sacking from the Mirror.