Piers Morgan was born Piers Stefan O'Meara on 30 March 1965 in Newick, Sussex, England, to Vincent Eamonn O'Meara, an Irish-born dentist, originally from County Offaly, and Gabrielle Georgina Sybille (nee Oliver). He took his stepfather's surname and became known as Piers Stefan Pughe-Morgan. He attended the independent school Cumnor House from the ages of seven to thirteen, and then Chailey School, a comprehensive secondary school in Chailey, near Lewes, East Sussex, followed by Priory School for sixth form. Morgan studied journalism at Harlow College.

As editor of the Daily Mirror, in 1996 Morgan was forced to apologise on television for the headline (rendered in upper case) "Achtung Surrender! For You Fritz Ze Euro Championship Is Over" on 25 June 1996, a day before England met Germany in a semi-final of the Euro '96 football championships. A PS16 million package of investment in the title was rolled out from January, including the dropping of "Daily" from the masthead in February, which was later reversed. Roy Greenslade wrote in August 1999 that Morgan's editorship "has made a huge difference: his enormous enthusiasm, determination and focus is a major plus". Morgan was the subject of an investigation in 2000 after Suzy Jagger wrote an article for The Daily Telegraph revealing that he had bought PS20,000 worth of shares in the computer company Viglen soon before the Mirror 's "City Slickers" column tipped Viglen as a good buy. Morgan was found by the Press Complaints Commission to have breached the Code of Conduct on financial journalism, but kept his job. The "City Slickers" columnists, Anil Bhoyrul and James Hipwell, were both found to have committed further breaches of the Code and were sacked before the inquiry concluded. Further enquiry by the Department of Trade and Industry in 2004 cleared Morgan of any charges. On 7 December 2005, Bhoyrul and Hipwell were convicted of conspiracy to breach the Financial Services Act. During the trial it emerged that Morgan had bought PS67,000 worth of Viglen shares, emptying his bank account and investing under his (first) wife's name, too. The Mirror attempted to move mid-market in 2002, claiming to eschew the more trivial stories of show-business and gossip. Morgan rehired John Pilger, who had been sacked in 1985 early in Robert Maxwell's ownership of the Mirror titles. In the wake of the Abu Ghraib torture scandal, Morgan was fired as Editor of the Daily Mirror "with immediate effect" on 14 May 2004, after refusing to apologise to Sly Bailey, then head of Trinity Mirror, for authorising the newspaper's publication of photographs which had been shown to be false. These were alleged to show Iraqi prisoners being abused by British Army soldiers from the Queen's Lancashire Regiment. When, within days the photographs were shown to be crude fakes, under the headline "SORRY..WE WERE HOAXED", the Mirror responded that it had fallen victim to a "calculated and malicious hoax" and apologised for the publication of the photographs. However, Morgan has refused to admit that the photographs were faked, and has stated that the abuse shown in the photographs is similar to the sort of abuse which was happening in the British Army in Iraq at the time.

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Morgan was the subject of an investigation in 2000