- Culture
- 26 Jan 17
Fans of Trainspotting will be amused at the furore that has broken out between one of the movie’s stars and the British journalist and TV presenter, Piers Morgan.
The Scottish actor, who also featured in Star Wars, pulled out of an interview on Tuesday – saying that he objected to host Piers Morgan's comments about last weekend's women's march, in which he derided "rabid feminists". Morgan is a former editor of the UK Daily Mirror.
And the outcome was a diatribe by Morgan in the Mail yesterday, that descended to a rather base level of abuse in a brazenly sensationalist headline.
Morgan has claimed that Ewan McGregor "let down" Good Morning Britain viewers by refusing to appear on the programme.
"An actor who had contractually agreed to appear on a TV show to promote his new film pulls out at the last minute because he doesn’t like the political opinion of one of the presenters,” he stated in his article for the Mail.
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He went on to describe McGregor as a “very angry man when it comes to his politics."
Now, Morgan has commented further, as quoted in a Press Association report.
"Ewan McGregor is a major star, perfectly entitled to have his opinion about politics, I'm entitled to mine,” he is reported as saying "We should all be able to have different views. I would have respected him more if he'd walked out here sat down and said: 'You are wrong about the women's march', and we could have had an adult conversation about it."
"Having a conversation about these things is how we all move on,” he added. "I was very disappointed with what he did - he let down the viewers and he let down himself.”
McGregor had been due to appear on the ITV breakfast show to talk about T2: Trainspotting.
But when he discovered that Morgan was the presenter of the show, he tweeted: "Was going on Good Morning Britain, didn't realise Piers Morgan was host. Won't go on with him after his comments about women's march."
Morgan had attempted to be smart about the women's marches via Twitter. "I'm planning a men's march,” he said, "to protest at the creeping global emasculation of my gender by rabid feminists. Who's with me?"
By any stretch, it was a rather lame attempt at humour. As for whether or not Ewan McGregor was right to pull out of the programme – well, as publicity for T2: Trainspotting goes, you could hardly beat it!