Piers Morgan is days away from the premiere of his new CNN show, “Piers Morgan Tonight,” and he’s made it no secret that Madonna is not welcome as a guest on his show.
Last week, in fact, at CNN’s Television Critics Association Winter 2011 Session, Morgan referred to the queen of pop as “an irritant in my life for 20 years,” and added the only way she would be invited to be a guest on his show, is if she “made the apology on CNN.”
So far, Morgan has refrained from explaining the nature of their feud — until now.
“There is a story here. There’s no way you would pick Madonna out of nowhere,” Access Hollywood’s Billy Bush asked when sitting down with Morgan during a visit to the talk show host’s new set. “What has she done to you? What has she done to your family?
“Something has happened with Madonna, a few things have gone down between Madonna and I,” Morgan said. “There’s a few things have happened. She knows.
Fighting words! Morgan has claimed she’s “boring” and “annoying” as reasons Madonna’s not welcome on “Piers Morgan Tonight,” but Bush pushed further for the real story.
“Be forthright because that’s exactly what you expect from your guests,” Bush said, urging Morgan to reveal what sparked the feud.
“Madonna and I, we’ve never really seen eye-to-eye,” Morgan said. “There was a bread roll throwing incident in London in the mid ‘90s; there was an incident at a hotel in the south of France [at] the Cannes Film Festival involving a photographer and a bodyguard; there’s been an incident involving a pub owned by her recently departed husband, Guy Ritchie, where my brother was the manager.”
But that isn’t all. Morgan claimed he lost a scoop on a Madonna story due to her rep.
“You know the worst thing Madonna did to me? Madonna’s publicist once said to me, ‘Listen to me, Madonna is not pregnant,’ when I was running a newspaper. And I said, ‘Are you sure?’ She said, ‘Listen to me, Piers. Madonna is not pregnant.’
“The next day, they announced [the news] on a rival newspaper’s website,” Morgan continued. “There’s a series of crimes.”
Access Hollywood contacted Madonna’s rep, who was not immediately available for comment.
As for Morgan, he’s still holding a grudge.
“The only way she can come back is to literally get on bended knee in somewhere like Times Square on national television and beg me for forgiveness,” he said.
“Piers Morgan Tonight” premieres on Jan. 17 at 9 p.m. ET on CNN.