Piers Morgan appeared on ITV’s Lorraine today
Piers Morgan has hit out at the cuts to ITV’s daytime programmes while appearing on Lorraine, joking about the show’s “savage” cuts. Piers appeared as a guest on Lorraine Kelly’s show today to speak about Donald Trump and the release of the Jeffrey Epstein files.
However, as Lorraine began to introduce him, Piers began mimicking Lorraine. “Hello!” he said in a high-pitched Scottish accent. “Hello!”
Lorraine responded: “If I ever fall over, you can just do it if you want to. Let’s swap.” Meanwhile, Piers thought that GMB presenters Kate Garraway and Richard Madeley were still in a two-way conversation with them after ending their programme.
Piers Morgan began debating with Dr. Amir on ITV’s Lorraine today over transgender issues
“Hi Kate, Hi Richard – do you miss me?” he said, before Lorraine said: “They’re away, they’ve gone.” Piers said: “Where’ve they gone? There used to be a little two-way. That’s all gone as well? Cutbacks are savage aren’t they.”
A laughing Lorraine said: “Totally! totally.” Piers went onto cause more chaos on the show, getting into a debate with Lorraine and Dr. Amir Khan about reports of the government’s transgender guidance around single-sex spaces.
“What is a cisgender woman? Can we just call them women please? That would solve a lot of the problem. Stop giving them stupid names like ‘cisgendered’,” Piers said, to which Dr. Amir said: “There’s a difference between sex and gender.”
The pair then continued to debate over the topic, with Piers repeatedly speaking over Dr. Amir and Lorraine. ” Piers Morgan causing havoc on Lorraine. The producers are probably having a meltdown,” one fan wrote on X.
Another said: “Shut up Piers and let others talk! #lorraine”
Back in May, ITV announced that it was introducing huge changes to its daytime programmes from next week – with Lorraine being cut back to a runtime of 30 minutes. Lorraine will air for just 30 weeks of the year as part of the new initiative, while GMB will be extended by 30 minutes.
It isn’t the only show to face cuts, with Loose Women airing on a season basis of 30 weeks a year as well. The cuts resulted in over 220 people losing their jobs, with GMB being produced by ITV’s news provider ITN with only 38 of the 113 staff being kept on.
Kevin Lygo, Managing Director of ITV’s Media and Entertainment Division, said at the time: “Daytime is a really important part of what we do, and these scheduling and production changes will enable us to continue to deliver a schedule providing viewers with the news, debate and discussion they love from the presenters they know and trust as well generating savings which will allow us to reinvest across the programme budget in other genres.
“These changes also allow us to consolidate our news operations and expand our national, international and regional news output and to build upon our proud history of trusted journalism at a time when our viewers need accurate, unbiased news coverage more than ever. I recognise that our plans will have an impact on staff off screen in our Daytime production teams.”
He added: “We will work with ITV Studios and ITN as they manage these changes to produce the shows differently from next year, and support them through this transition. Daytime has been a core element of ITV’s schedule for over 40 years and these changes will set ITV up to continue to bring viewers award winning news, views and discussion as we enter our eighth decade.”
