Piers Morgan: Piers of the realm

He says, of course, that it was all in the public interest. But he can barely disguise his glee in overshadowing the state visit of George Bush or in revealing the most intimate details of his royal host's breakfast arrangements. Whichever way you look at it, the editor of the 'Daily Mirror' is making headlines once again

It was the textbook tabloid exposé. A Daily Mirror trainee reporter with a rookie's zeal worked undercover as a Buckingham Palace footman for two months, preparing the Queen's breakfast, discreetly photographing the royal bedrooms, and revealing lapses in security on the eve of President Bush's state visit. For the editor, Piers Morgan, it represented the second time in weeks that his paper had scooped its rivals with a royal coup that, like the Paul Burrell revelations before it, had other tabloid editors seething.

Yet, in many ways, reporter Ryan Parry's forensic account of the humdrum daily workings of the royal household revealed as much about Morgan's own contradictions as it did about the security failings surrounding President Bush's state visit. This is a "serious" tabloid editor who returned the red-top Mirror to its Daily Mirror roots, brought back investigative journalist John Pilger and makes a virtue of his loathing for celebrities. But he is also clearly guilty of the same obsession with the mundane detail of their lives that he so often criticises in others.

This week, Morgan will present the first episode of The Importance of Being Famous, a Channel 4 series in which he will explore the modern-day fixation with fame. Anyone who has noted the Mirror's habit of eating its cake and having it when it comes to stories about the royals and C-list celebrities - or observed Morgan's own, carefully calculated rise to prominence as a television pundit - might feel that the programme's title could easily apply to him.

This, after all, is the editor whose professed exasperation with reality TV led him to appoint an "anti-Big Brother correspondent", only to give over more column inches to it than were allocated to the uncritical coverage in the "official Big Brother paper", The Sun.

At one stage Morgan even announced a "boycott" of whingeing celebrities who seek attention but complain about "privacy". Within weeks the pledge was broken as the actions of these stars proved too "absurd" and/or "trivial" to ignore. Then there were the high-profile exposés: the photographs of Naomi Campbell leaving Narcotics Anonymous that landed him in the High Court, and revelations about the affair between Ulrika Jonsson and Sven Goran Eriksson.

Publicist Max Clifford sees Morgan's yo-yo approach as an essentially opportunistic one. "He's got a natural talent. He makes good television and he knows the ingredients people want. He also understands how bloody ridiculous the whole thing is," he said, citing Tabloid Tales, Morgan's recent TV series about some of the most infamous run-ins between celebrities and the tabloids.

Morgan's on-off love affair with show business is only one of his many contradictions. He opposed the miners' strike but gave unfashionable backing to the firefighters; a born-again espouser of serious causes, who still can't resist such infantile tabloid stunts as running a daily "eclipse" of the bald head of his erstwhile rival, Sun editor David Yelland, on the Mirror's front page. Then there was the hounding his other bête noire, the Private Eye editor Ian Hislop, with promises of damaging revelations that never materialise.

Born Piers Stefan Pughe-Morgan, the Mirror editor is the son of an aspirational meat merchant, who had to withdraw him from private school when the fees became too expensive. His closeness to his parents continues. He is said to be so devoted to them that he goes down to see them at their Sussex home almost every weekend. He has even bought the house next door. A doting father to two sons, he has grown up a curious hybrid of toff and man of the people.

He wears handmade suits, dines at Marco Pierre White restaurants, where he boasts of being served with £3,000 bottles of dessert wine, and admits to having voted for Margaret Thatcher. His meteoric rise - from Sun showbiz columnist to becoming, at 28, Britain's youngest ever tabloid editor, when he took over the News of the World - has been tempered by some awareness of his own good fortune.

Morgan, now 38, recently said he felt "humble" when "ordinary people in ordinary streets doing ordinary jobs" send in cheques equivalent to "half their weekly supermarket bill" to Mirror appeals. He describes his current political views as "New Labourish" - a claim borne out by worthy, Blairish initiatives such as the paper's annual Pride of Britain Awards for "ordinary people" who show extraordinary courage in the face of adversity.

His staff certainly think highly of him. One Mirror journalist speaks of the "inspirational" war briefings he gave around the time of the outbreak of hostilities in Iraq, in which he predicted his decision to oppose the conflict signalled a "crowning moment" for the paper. He devoted splash after splash to the grim consequences of the military onslaught.

Though colleagues insist the editor's anti-war stand is genuine, there is much that is establishment about Morgan the man - not least an ingrained regard for the Forces that comes from having both a brother and brother-in-law who are Army officers. But Morgan's stance certainly raised his standing in the eyes of his staff. They not only admired his decision, but also the inclusive way in which he led them during the conflict. Every journalist, from the lowliest editorial assistant to the most senior correspondent, was invited to the war briefings - engendering a camaraderie that is all too rare in the cut-throat world of Fleet Street. "He says hello to people - that's his style," says one of Morgan's staff writers. "If you see him in the pub near the offices he will buy you a pint."

He also respects signs of healthy confidence in others. When a vacancy for a new political editor came up at the Mirror a few years ago, he was so appalled that none of his reporters applied for it that he launched into a tirade lambasting his staff for their lack of ambition.

Kelvin MacKenzie, head of Talksport and Morgan's former boss at The Sun, sums him up thus: "Editing tabloids is like running football clubs - many try, few succeed. Piers has been a resounding success."

Speculation about Morgan's future at the Mirror persist. Although its war stance improved the paper's standing among fellow journalists, the circulation still refuses to rise back above the symbolic two-million mark, having dropped nearly 9 per cent over the past year. Also hanging over Morgan is the rumbling controversy of the "City Slickers affair", the share-tipping scandal that saw two of his most trusted reporters resign. His links to that are still being investigated by the Department of Trade and Industry.

Sly Bailey, chief executive of Trinity Mirror, the paper's owners, also has him in her sights. When she was appointed earlier this year, she publicly spoke out in favour of "seriously good popular journalism rather than just serious news". With an eye to his increasing TV appearances, some predict he will jump before he is pushed. Clifford can even see him doing a Chris Evans, and forming his own TV company. If so, the test may ultimately be whether the public has more of a taste for Morgan the man than Morgan the editor.