Who Was Piers Morgan Named After?

In keeping with his outsized personality, Piers Morgan was named after another famous Brit, the racing car driver Piers Courage, according to BBC. However, the connection isn't quite as impressive as it appears on the surface since Courage competed in 29 World Championship Grand Prix events but only garnered two podium finishes overall (as Digital Spy confirms, he was a brewery heir, too, so racing might have been more of a hobby). Moreover, Morgan's real, full name is Piers Stefan O'Meara, but he changed it to Piers Stefan Pughe-Morgan, perhaps because it sounded a bit fancier? He did have a massive "Great Gatsby"-themed 50th after all, as Business Insider notes, at which Morgan appeared as Gatsby himself. 

Evidently, the controversial pundit always fancied himself as a somebody, which is reportedly why he took Meghan Markle "ghosting" him so hard. As the man himself recalled in a 1994 interview with The Independent, "I became the friend of the stars, a rampant egomaniac," while working as a gossip columnist, admitting, "Madonna, Stallone, Bowie, Paul McCartney, hundreds of them. It was shameless, as they didn't even know me from Adam." As his former editor, Kelvin MacKenzie, told Business Insider, "Nobody had ever done that before. It was clear to me that what he had to say was far more interesting than some pop star." 

For better or worse, Morgan ensured that, before too long, everybody knew his name.