# Andrew Pierce

Andrew Pierce (born Patrick Connolly; 26 February 1961) is a British journalist, editor, author, broadcaster and political commentator.

## Early life

Pierce was born in Bristol to an Irish Catholic mother and an unknown father. He spent the first two years of his life in Nazareth House, a Catholic orphanage in Cheltenham, and was adopted by a family from Swindon and brought up on a council estate there. His adoptive father worked on the assembly line at British Leyland, a formerly state-owned car factory.
Pierce was educated at St Joseph's Roman Catholic School, now known as St Joseph's Catholic College, a state comprehensive school in Swindon. He did not go to university.

## Career in journalism

Pierce is a former assistant editor of both The Daily Telegraph and The Times newspapers, and the former political editor of the latter. He is a columnist and consultant editor for the Daily Mail, which he joined in 2009.
Pierce presented a Sunday morning political radio show on the commercial radio station LBC 97.3 from 2008 until 2012, when he left. That radio programme was in the latter years presented as a double-headed show with Kevin Maguire from the Daily Mirror. Pierce and Maguire continue their double act reviewing, previewing and dissecting the media and politics on the BBC, ITV and Sky News. From 22 March 2014, Pierce started presenting a Saturday breakfast show on LBC Radio.
In 2014, the Daily Mail had to pay damages to Kirsten Farage after Pierce falsely claimed in a column that she had been a mistress of Nigel Farage, the then leader of UKIP, while he was still married to his first wife. In May 2018, the Daily Mail paid £11,000 towards the legal costs of the writer Kate Maltby after the publication of an article by Pierce about the claims of sexual harassment Maltby made against the politician Damian Green. The article was removed from the Mail's website without the publication having made an admission of fault.
Pierce is currently a presenter on the GB News television channel.

## Personal life

Pierce was raised, and remains, a Catholic. He is gay and was chosen by The Observer in 2005 as one of the "gays who shape our new Britain". He strongly supports civil partnerships, and lives in a long-term civil partnership, per the Civil Partnership Act 2004. He opposed the introduction of same-sex marriage.
In a BBC documentary in 2018 about Greg Owen and the court case National AIDS Trust v NHS Service Commissioning Board, Pierce strongly criticised the idea of taxpayer-funded PrEP, a preventative medication to protect against contracting HIV: "That's what this is about: indulging gay men who don't want to use a condom. Well that's outrageous. Why should the taxpayer subsidise a reckless sex life of people in the gay community?"

## Iris Prize

The Iris Prize Festival is a five-day public event in Cardiff, Wales, which includes screenings of the 30 short films competing for the Iris Prize. The Iris Prize is supported by the Michael Bishop Foundation and is the world's largest LGBT short film prize, giving the winning filmmaker £30,000 to make their next short film in the UK. Iris-produced shorts include Burger (2013), directed by Magnus Mork, and Followers (2015), directed by Tim Marshall, both of which were selected for the prestigious Sundance Film Festival. Pierce became Patron of the Iris Prize in 2007, and in 2013 became its first Chair.
During his tenure as chair of the Iris Prize, Pierce oversaw a number of key developments in the festival. In 2014, at a launch reception, Pierce announced a new strand at the Iris Prize Festival, Best British Short, and helped secure a sponsorship deal with the Pinewood Studios Group totalling £14,000 in post-production sound for the winning filmmaker. In January 2015, it was announced that the Iris Prize would be increasing from £25,000 to £30,000.

## Selected publications

* Parris, Matthew; Prosser, David; Pierce, Andrew (1995), Great parliamentary scandals: four centuries of calumny, smear and innuendo, Robson Books, ISBN 978-0-86051-957-7