Piers Morgan on…
Press Pack
Piers Morgan returns in his role as a VIP access-all-areas pass as he explores the glitzy and
glamorous locations of Las Vegas, Marbella and Shanghai.
Piers takes in the spectacular sights, the kind that are normally seen only by millionaires,
including the hotel suites with basketball courts and bowling alleys in Vegas, the most
exclusive housing estate in the world in Marbella and the world’s highest hotel in Shanghai.
He meets the people living, working and partying in the cities, including Hollywood legend Sly
Stallone and multi-million dollar heiress Paris Hilton.
And he investigates how the global recession has affected these fascinating places.
Piers Morgan on…is produced by Michael Massey. The executive producers are Jane Lush
and Fenia Vardanis.
The series is a Splash Media production for ITV1
Press contact: Lyndsey Weatherall at ITV on 0207 1573024
Pictures: Peter Gray at ITV on 084 4881 3046
Piers Morgan on…Las Vegas
In the first episode Piers jets into Las Vegas – the vast neon nightspot in the middle of the
Nevada Desert dubbed Sin City due to the sheer volume of drinkers, gamblers, revellers and
hookers who flock there every year.
For decades Vegas has embodied the true American dream and is seen as a place where
anything was possible. Piers meets the celebrities who love to party there, including Sylvester
Stallone, Paris Hilton and Joan Rivers.
He takes in the extraordinary sights of the city, from the hotel shaped like a pyramid, to the
one with a miniature Eiffel Tower and the one with a replica Venetian canal system – indoors.
He sees the hotel with 24 carat gold-plated windows and looks around the $40,000 a night
hotel suite and its sister suite which comes with a basketball court.
He meets the people who live in the city, including some of the casino bosses, who reveal
how they make their money, and the town’s mayor. One Englishman’s family explain how
their American dream turned into a nightmare and Piers visits the Hoover Dam to see the
alarmingly low supply of water for the city.
Piers also investigates the impact the global recession has had on Las Vegas, which has so
far seen three hotel casinos go bust and visitor numbers fall.
He says: “The recession swept through the city like a financial tsunami and it’s now fighting
for its very existence. Can it survive and thrive again? Or will it die at the altar of its own wheel
of fortune?”
Las Vegas began as a desert outpost in 1905 and by the 1950’s had captured the world’s
imagination as a fun destination.
The city now has 150,000 guest rooms to choose from and is home to 17 of the world’s 20
largest and glitziest hotels – all of which are built on the four mile Las Vegas Boulevard, also
known as The Strip.
Piers visits some of the casinos and sees a table with $30m dollars of money and chips laid
out on it.
He visits the hotel casino specifically designed for high rollers, known as ‘whales’, who
regularly spend upwards of $5m a night in the casino. The Mansion, which is tucked away
from the main strip, offers a tranquil haven for the multimillionaires. Everything from $20,000
bottles of cognac to caviar is free to big gambling guests, each of whom has eight members
of staff looking after them.
The Mansion’s vice president, Ly Ping Wu, tells Piers: “You don’t have to give me anything,
your play in the casino dictates how much more luxury you would like to have. If you’re a
good customer we’ll give you everything you want to make you happy.”
Piers meets the boss of the casino, Debra Nutton, who tells him that the ‘whales’ are mostly
competitive men who gamble for the challenge, not the money.
In 2007 the gambling revenue in the city was $12bn a year, this has now fallen by 20 per
cent. Debra says: “I think the recession has definitely hurt business. There was a time when
you would come in here on a Saturday and would see every game full and that’s certainly not
the case today.”
Piers tries out gambling in the casino – he starts with $200,000 worth of chips and opens with
a win, then ends up losing $1m in just 90 seconds.
He says: “When you can lose a million dollars in 90 seconds, you can see why they’re
prepared to make their guests very happy indeed. It is all about indulgence in Vegas, you
could call it flashy, even cliché, but in return, anything goes.”
Casino host Steve Syr shows Piers around the penthouse suite at the Hard Rock Café hotel,
complete with its own bowling alley, and explains how he draws customers to his casino.
He says: “I try not to do anything morally wrong, but if I happen to be at the airport and I’m in
a limo and they think they’re going to Caesar’s and we end up at The Hard Rock, that’s been
fun. I’m like a Jerry Maguire, I make the deal, ‘How much am I going to give the girlfriend
shopping? Maybe your betting limits?’ If you lost $1m you only have to pay back $850,000
because I’m going to discount that to get you in. It’s egos, I’m an ego feeder.
“Here’s my goal, someone loses $100,000, shakes my hand and says, ‘God, I had a great
time, when’s your next event?’ It’s the cost of entertainment, some people want to travel the
world, some people want to go to Hawaii, some people want to risk money gambling.”
The city’s mayor, Oscar Goodman, who used to be a criminal attorney for the mob, invites
Piers into his elaborately decorated office and Piers questions him about suggestions he’d
like to legalise prostitution and chop graffiti artists’ thumbs off.
While in the city, Piers also meets some of the celebrities who love to party there, including
Sylvester Stallone who tells him about his amazing birthday party with Arnold
Schwarzenegger, Bruce Willis and John Travolta.
As they gamble together, Sly tells Piers that he has always loved Vegas. He says: “I would go
on the Dracula diet, you sleep all day, up all night and then you go to a fight, usually sit ring
side as Mohammed Ali or Ken Norton are in the ring, and I would go in a white disco suit and
the collar up - it’s embarrassing – and then you would hit all these raucous clubs, finally crash
at about five in the morning, wake up at about noon, you look in the mirror and see your
grandfather, ‘What’s happened? Who stole my face?’
“My wife threw my birthday party, there were so many celebrities who I never thought we
would get together in one room, Arnold, Bruce, Travolta and Tom Jones. The most fun city is
Vegas.”
Meeting up with multi-million dollar heiress Paris Hilton, Piers lounges with her on a hotel
room bed as she tells him: “I love Vegas, I’ve been coming here my whole life, ever since I
was two-years-old. Every New Year we come with my family, it’s just like Disneyland for
adults. You can gamble, you can do anything here, it’s crazy. But what happens in Vegas,
stays in Vegas.”
And Joan Rivers says she believes you’ve made it when you’ve performed in Vegas. She
adds: “It’s like coming to a giant cocktail party, ‘Oh, there’s Bet, oh, there’s Elton.’”
American’s Got Talent winner Terry Fator has reportedly just signed a $100m deal to perform
on The Strip for five years. Piersgoes to see him in his hotel room as he prepares to go on
stage and talks about his new-found fame.
When the recession hit Vegas many hotels had to slash their room rates and were struggling
to make enough to cover their debts. Several multi-billion dollar builds ground to a halt when
developers ran out of money.
Piers meets Brit Robert Earle who has just opened a 52 storey hotel and residential space
despite running up a $860m debt on his present hotel, the Planet Hollywood.
He tells Piers it costs $1m per day to run Planet Hollywood and the recession has been a big
problem. He says: “It’s been dreadful, it’s been an unmitigated disaster, it’s caused most
companies to look at their lending structure and see what they can do. It came almost
overnight, it came because businesses cancelled their trips, it came because holiday makers
cancelled their holidays because they had trouble paying their mortgage, America reacts to
everything very, very quickly.”
Robert tells Piers that hotel casinos are returning to practices of days gone by – offering free
food and rooms to draw people in.
And it isn’t just the casinos that have been hit. Piers investigates how the property crash
affected the city when he meets the Brit who has lost his property business thanks to the
credit crunch, and visits the development where luxury homes which were built to sell for $8m
are now fetching just over half that price tag.
Piers says: “A couple of years ago Vegas was the fastest growing city in America, 50,000
people a year moved here as property and land prices exploded. It was the land of milk and
honey, whatever background you came from, you could still strike it rich, but then came the
credit crunch. The casinos hit problems, they shed jobs, the dream soured. Very quickly
Vegas became the fastest again, but for closures, it was the ground zero of the worldwide
property crash.”
When Mark McGary moved to Vegas 20 years ago he built up a business as a mortgage
broker which saw him earning enough to buy six houses, several cars and a $1m designer
home which he had built from scratch.
Mark shows Piers around the home which he now has to sell for only half of what he paid for
it.
As well as problems created by the credit crunch, Piers discovers the city has an even bigger
worry to contend with - a shortage of water. He visits the Hoover Dam where water levels are
dropping at an alarming rate and could see the city without water in as little as eight years.
In spite of these problems, Piers meets the man investing billions in taking the city forward,
the chief executive of the MGM City Centre, the $8.5bn project billed as ‘The Future of
Vegas’. MGM City Centre is the largest privately funded development America has even
seen, with 6000 hotel rooms, residential and entertainment space. It has been designed by
eight of the foremost architects working in America, including Sir Norman Foster.
Chief exec Jim Murran reveals to Piers that the project recently came within two hours of
bankruptcy which would have seen 9000 people out of work. Luckily the development was
saved. Jim explains that the 76 acre site will feature only one casino – the rest will be aimed
at lifestyle, shopping and entertainment, which he believes is the future of the city.
He says: “We believe that myopic one dimensional view of Vegas is yesterday’s news.”
Piers Morgan on…Marbella
In the second episode of the series Piers tours around the Spanish resort of Marbella
investigating the tale of two cities he believes it is – one part swamped with boozed up Brits,
vice girls and dubbed the Costa del Crime, the other part home to millionaires.
Piers parties with a hen night, drinks with Gary Lineker’s brother at his bar and meets the
couple gassed and robbed in their own home.
He also visits the £50m racing club which costs £150,000 to join, looks around the £70m
mansion with carpets worth £2m and a £150,000 chandelier and looks around one of the
most exclusive housing estates in the world where homes sell for up to £20m.
He meets James Hewett, who has moved to the resort to start a new life as a restaurateur,
and catches up with Bianca Gascoigne and her friends at a ‘champagne spray party’.
Piers tells the programme: “Marbella is the world’s most surprising resort, home to Saudi
princes, Hollywood stars, European royalty, billionaire tycoons and multi-millionaire footballers
whose combined wealth is more than many South American countries.
“This town is more than just binging Brits, wannabe wags and drug-fuelled gangs. I’m going to
go on a high-octane ride to the Marbella you might not know exists. The Marbella that belongs
to the millionaires. It’s stuffed with million pound mansions, overflowing with boats and oozing
with cars. And there’s a few resident billionaires to go with them.”
Three hundred thousand Brits live in Marbella and over 2.5 million visit every year. The resort
first became popular in the fifties when the Marbella Club Hotel opened to offer a discreet
hideaway for anyone who wanted to stay out of the public eye. Piers visits the hotel which
boasts 23,000 trees and a selection of private villas to provide the perfect retreat for stars
such as Eva Longoria who recently paid £3,500 for a suite there.
The programme follows Piers as he drives through Marbella in a Ferrari, taking in the mosque
built by a Saudi Arabian king and the mansion built as his home. And he sees some of the
many golf courses – there are more per head in Marbella than anywhere else in the world.
Property is more expensive per square metre in Marbella than in Mayfair. Piers gets a guided
tour around Loriana which is rented out for 20,000 euros a night and is reputed to be the most
impressive mega-mansion in Marbella. The Brit who owns it remains anonymous, but he uses
the home, complete with a Roman spa, a fully stocked gym, a private cinema and even a
private hospital room, purely for his holidays in the summer.
Piers meets up with Karen Brady, the ex-managing director of Birmingham City, who owns a
flat in Marbella and the pair go shopping for handbags worth 16,000 euros.
Karen tells Piers: “There’s some really truly, truly wealthy people and lots of people who want
to be close to the glamour, that’s why they come to Marbella, that’s why they’re down in the
port, they’re in the shops. You have got one side of it which is very elegant, beautiful homes
to live in, wonderful shops but on the other side you have got the stag dos, the hen dos,
people staggering out of clubs at five o’clock in the morning, but, actually, both sides are quite
fun.”
Piers goes into the hills to meet Klass Zwart who founded the exclusive Ascari Racing club
which has a whopping £150,000 joining fee. After building his very own race track, Klass also
designed and built his own brand name Ascari super car which sell for £250,000. Class
shows Piers into his well stocked garage which houses £10m worth of Formula 1 cars.
Klass tells Piers: “Everytime I get here I still like it, it’s like walking into heaven when I get to
those gates.”
Piers visits the swanky nightclub where Sean Connery, Bruce Willis, Rod Stewart and Prince
Harry have been known to party and a bottle of champagne can set you back £30,000. And
he meets Bianca Gascoigne as she and her pals spray each other with bottles of champagne
at a ‘champagne spray party’.
She tells him: “Last time I went there me and the girls had 120 bottles of champagne but, the
thing is, you don’t drink it all so what else is there to do with it? Spray it.”
Piers meets Brit James Yeung who is living the high life in Marbella after buying a flat in the
tax haven of Gibraltar then selling his business in the UK and saving a fortune in capital gains
tax.
And he flies over the La Zagaleta one of the most exclusive housing estates in the world,
which measures 220 acres, has two golf courses, tennis courts, a bowling alley and a
nightclub and where a plot of land alone will set you back £4m.
Most of the houses stand empty and are used for just a few weeks of the year, but they have
24 hour armed security, dog patrols, CCTV and a barbed wire perimeter fence. Brit Graham
Fisher shows Piers the view from his mountain hideaway three kilometres into the estate and
explains that he and his wife, Barbara, chose the home because it is so secure.
Barbara tells Piers: “We have some great friends here. We came here because I would think
it’s one of the safest places in Europe.”
Despite the safety of the gated complexes, in the seventies Marbella was dubbed the Costa
del Crime when some of the most notorious criminals moved there to enjoy the sun and avoid
getting arrested. Piers tells the programme that these days there are still many criminals living
in the resort.
He says: “Of course where there are so many criminals living in such a small place there are
bound to be differences of opinion. In the last few years along this small stretch of Spanish
suburbia there have been a whole spate of gangland shootings. Three people were shot in
broad daylight in a restaurant. In this town you don’t want to mess with the wrong people.”
Piers meets Wesley Clarkson, a journalist who has written books on the underground in
Marbella.
Wesley tells Piers: “What’s so weird about this place is that you can sit on the beach as a
tourist having a lovely time in the sun drinking your Pina Colada at the bar on the beach and
20 yards behind you might be a brothel or 20 yards behind that might be a drug baron’s
house and then 20 yards behind that might be a couple of criminals threatening each other
with a gun.
“They’re here because money attracts criminals, sunshine attracts criminals, a lapse police
force attracts criminals – all the elements are here.
“Instead of having friendly old time British villains who are nice to women and children, we’ve
actually got hard-nosed Russian gangsters and other eastern Europeans. These are people
who take no prisoners. They will order a hit on an enemy and they don’t care if their wife and
children are hit at the same time.”
Wesley explains to Piers that because of the high volume of criminals in the area, up to 70
per cent of all new buildings are built with ‘black’ money. A fifteen year building bonanza saw
corrupt mayors and officials grant thousands of illegal permits to build on restricted land.
In the end three mayors went to jail and Marbella council was disbanded.
Piers meets one couple who have experienced both the good and the bad of Marbella. Since
moving to the resort they have made a good living founding a newspaper for ex-pats and
believe the corrupt work of the council was done in the best interests of promoting the resort.
However, they acknowledge the council’s behaviour spawned the arrival of criminal gangs
and tell Piers about the time they were robbed in their home after being gassed via their own
air conditioning system.
As day turns to night in Marbella, Piers heads down to the port where, away from the glamour
on the front street, a very different clientele are partying at neon-lit bars such as Lineker’s
which is owned by Gary Lineker’s brother, Wayne.
Piers dances with a Brit hen party who tell him they have come to Marbella for a classier hen
night than they would get elsewhere. Piers says: “It’s an absolutely crazy place, yet, I have to
say, undeniably good fun, they’re all having a great time.”
Wayne Lineker, who once served time for tax evasion, has now opened a string of bars,
nightclubs and strip clubs across the Mediterranean. He meets Piers and hits back at claims
he has lowered the tone of Marbella.
He says: “What Lineker’s has done for the port is not lower the clientele, it’s brought a new
clientele to the port, a more down to earth clientele, and a great crowd.”
Max Clifford thinks differently and explains why when he invites Piers for afternoon tea at his
luxury villa.
He says: “Puerto Banus is like Soho in London. You can come out of the theatre in the West
End and go to a lovely restaurant or, you can go into Soho where there are drug addicts and
prostitutes – it’s the same here.”
He tells Piers he would like to clean up Marbella with more police and by keeping careful
control over the bars. He says he was approached to look after the reputation of the resort,
but his charges of £25,000 a month were deemed too expensive.
As he leaves the resort behind, Piers says: “I set out to investigate a tale of two cities but
Marbella turned out to be almost a mini-metropolis in the sun trying to be everything to
everyone.
“Try to find out exactly why people flock down here and you’ll be sipping your gin and tonics
for several days to come, but one thing is for sure, it remains at its heart somewhere where
people come to live a dream, to retire, to party, to make a fortune, to spend a fortune or even
just enjoy a holiday. Marbella, whatever tickles your fancy, can offer it all.”
Piers Morgan on…Shanghai
In the third episode of the series, Piers visits the gleaming mega-city of Shanghai – the
friendly face of capitalism that Communist China shows to the world.
Piers tells the programme that Shanghai is set to become the world’s greatest economic
superpower within the next 20 years and he sets off to explore the city to discover what will
make it the mightiest, richest, most riotous place on earth.
He takes in the highest hotel in the world and the busiest port in the world and meets some of
the people living and working in the city, including a multi-million pound heiress who built her
own apartment block.
Piers tell the programme: “It’s hard to give you a sense of Shanghai, but its ambition oozes
from every pore. The closest parallel is Victorian London with its super rich and desperate
poor; a cauldron of construction and consumption on an immense scale. It’s a fast forward
Industrial Revolution.
“And, just like those Victorians, there is a confidence about the future here that is addictive.
According to surveys, 83 per cent of Chinese believe that tomorrow will be better than today
and Shanghai epitomises that attitude.”
Piers sails down the Huangpu River, taking in the new skyscrapers which are springing up on
either side, two of them are the world’s tallest and there are plans for a new one which will be
half a kilometer high.
He visits the highest hotel in the world, between the 79 th and 93rd floors of one building where
it costs £8000 to stay in the Chairman’s Suite and you get your own personal chef, personal
kitchen and indoor garden.
Piers discovers that to make way for these new skyscrapers, buildings are taken down
without any discussion. He meets the family who are being forced to find somewhere else to
live as their home is being taken away from them and demolished.
He discovers the Chinese love for all things Western when he browses around the Barbie
store - which has six floors dedicated to the doll – and visits a Rolls Royce garage where the
cars sell for twice as much as in England and are bought before they even hit the showroom.
Piers meets one of the 116,000 millionaires living in the city. Pearl Lam is a multi-millionaire
heiress who adds to her fortune by selling art. Pearl shows Piers her private art collection
which she houses on the 18th floor of the luxury apartment block she built.
The programme follows Piers as he visits Shanghai’s Yangshan deep water port. The ports of
the city are the busiest in the world, shipping over 500 million tonnes of cargo a year.
Yangshan cost an estimated £7.5 billion to build and has a 32.5km bridge across the sea to
service it.
He chats to shipping magnet Sabrina Chao, the vice chair of Wah Kwong Shipping, the
company her grandfather started in the thirties.
On his journey around the city, Piers visits the hospital where Chinese people, desperate to
conform, are having folds put in their eyelids to make them look more western.
And he learns that a government fear of social networking means they have 30,000 IT experts
keeping an eye on anyone who is online in the country to stop them accessing sites like
Youtube, Facebook and Twitter.
Piers says: “The Chinese are a clever bunch. They’re renowned for taking our expertise,
doing it better and making it cheaper. That’s how China has amassed Billions and begs the
question - is China taking over the world?
“I’ve glimpsed the future and it’s here in Shanghai. Empires have come and gone. Us Brits
conquered the world in the name of God, queen and country, the Americans, democracy, but
when the Chinese are masters of our universe there’ll be no such pretence. For them it’ll be
about just one thing - the money.”
Press pack interview with Piers Morgan
What made you choose Las Vegas, Marbella and Shanghai for the new series? What
appealed to you about those places?
“I wanted to choose three very different places with three very different stories. Vegas is
facing financial meltdown because of the credit crunch and may not even survive as we know
it. Whereas Shanghai is definitely where the financial future of the world lies - an
extraordinary city moving forward at an astonishingly fast pace. As for Marbella, it's where all
the rich, beautiful people go to party - and a place where millions of Brits either go or want to
go.“
Did any of them surprise you?
“They all surprised me. Vegas was even more spectacular and over-the-top then I ever
imagined; Shanghai was absolutely fascinating in every way, from the people to the culture, to
the exotic food and commercial firepower. And Marbella was a strange mixture of wild,
dangerous party town for the masses, and exclusive private retreat for the billionaire club.”
What did you think of the party lifestyle in Las Vegas? Was it the kind of life you could
see yourself living?
“It's non-stop, crazy, but incredible fun. If you go there with a certain amount of money that
you're prepared to lose on having a great time, be that on gambling, girls, booze or shows,
then it's got to be the perfect escape place. But just be careful you don't start slamming that
credit card chasing your losses...”
What was it like meeting Sly Stallone?
“Sly flew in from Los Angeles especially to be interviewed by me, which was fantastic. We're
old friends from when I was The Sun's showbiz reporter, and he was a brilliant interviewee.
He's been going to Vegas for 40 years and loves it, though as you will see he's a terrible
gambler.”
Do you think Vegas will change, as the developers of MGM City believe? Or do you
think the major appeal is the sin of Sin City?
*I think they're taking one hell of a gamble by trying to clean the place up. Part of the great
appeal of Vegas is that it's naughty.”
What did you think of Marbella? Is it somewhere you would visit on holiday?
“It was another mad party-town, full of exotic characters - gangsters, hookers, playboys,
celebrities and Brits. All having a lot of fun. It was glamorous, sexy, and a little bit dangerous.
So yes, my kind of place!”
Were you shocked by the crime stories you heard?
“Very. I knew it had a dodgy reputation, but there are a lot of bodies buried in the hills over
Marbella, and the sheer scale of gun-running, prostitution, gangland violence and murder
amazed me.“
Had you visited China before? What did you think of the Communist ruling of the
country and the fact that Youtube, Twitter etc are inaccessible?
“No, but it's an incredible place. Huge, dynamic, and bursting out of communism into a new
capitalist world at full tilt. The old government officials are trying to control things like the
internet, but from what I saw, they can't. The youth can get all that Twitter stuff on their mobile
phones or through internet proxies, so they're ahead of the game. The Chinese are on the
march, and we'd all better wake up to that fact.”
What did you make of the generation of twenty-somethings, resulting from the one
child policy?
“In Shanghai, they're recently moved to a two child policy so like everything else in China, the
old barriers are crashing down as they hurtle towards Westernisation. But they're very smart
people, and know there are dangers in relaxing things too much.”